Distracted drivers via calling, texting continue to slaughter innocent Americans
Distracted drivers using cell phones to call or text killed about 6,000 Americans in car crash accidents last year. And more and more states are passing laws banning texting or calling when behind the wheel. Yet some results of such bans are not encouraging.
According to the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI), affiliated with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), no reduction in crashes occurred in New York, Connecticut, California and Washington, D.C. after bans on drivers using handheld cell phones took effect. This was based on assessing insurance claims for car crash damages.
Why? That’s a good question, since the link between cell phones and traffic deaths has been clearly established. One conclusion could be that fewer drivers in those states chose to heed the law and continued texting and talking, anyway.
Another possibility is that drivers who’d used handheld phones changed to bluetooth devices or other hands-free phones. Research shows that those phones also involve dangerous driver distractions. So, states changing the law and then drivers changing phones didn’t help.
Answers may be elusive, but they will come — and they must come, because Americans are being slaughtered by those who think driving a heavy vehicle in heavy traffic isn’t important enough when they want to divert themselves by phoning or texting inconsequential messages to friends.
All laws which seek to restrict if not outlaw such driving distractions and cell phone accidents are basically common sense laws. And they aren’t meant to punish, but to protect. After all, every person who drives also has hours each day when they aren’t driving, and those hours are the times to make phone calls, send text messages or surf the Web. Looking away even for a moment while traffic whizzes by is not the right time. It’s the potentially fatal time.
Such laws and their results will bear watching in the years ahead, as American comes to terms with cell phone fixations — even addictions — of so many citizens. But flatline results in three states do not mean we should back off and cede the progress already made. They only mean we should re-examine our efforts and work harder. The payoff — in spared lives and in whole families — is certainly worth it.
USA Legal Help Center.com supports victims of distracted driving car crash accidents. A cell phone accident lawyer can seek financial compensation in a cell phone accident lawsuit or distracted driver lawsuit.
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