A recent video posted on YouTube once again drives home the clear and present danger that texting while driving poses to human life. The video, which was uploaded by a police department from Fort Myers, Florida, shows footage taken by a dash-cam mounted on an official police vehicle.
The incident happened at 1:15am in the morning of Jan. 4, 2013 and it involved a 2004 Pontiac Grand Am that drove past the police car driven by officer Ivan Moorer. Moorer noticed that the Pontiac Grand Am was swerving and decelerating in an odd manner. Moorer decided to follow the vehicle and shortly after turning at a corner, the Pontiac suddenly sped up and swerved onto a sidewalk. The Pontiac then hit a guardrail before proceeding to hit an electric pole, a bus stop sign and a tree before finally flipping over and grinding to a halt.
Luckily, the driver of the Pontiac was unharmed and he was able to crawl out of the vehicle in one piece. The driver was Michael James Woody Jr., a 23-year old male who admitted to the officer that he was texting while driving. Aside from damaging his vehicle, Woody was also cited for texting while driving as well as careless driving.
While Woody is fortunate enough to be alive, thousands of other careless drivers lose their lives every year due to distracted driving. Distracted driving implies operating a vehicle while doing some other activity that can distract a person from his or her primary task: operating the vehicle.
Distraction.gov, the official US government site for distracted driving, says that distracted driving involves doing things like texting, surfing the web with a mobile device, eating and drinking, grooming, reading and watching videos. While a sensible person might say that avoiding these things while operating a vehicle is common sense, there are other seemingly harmless tasks that are also included in the list such as adjusting a car's sound system, using GPS devices, talking to co-passengers or even looking out of the window of the vehicle.
Due to the recent spike in smartphone usage, there has been an increase in people dying in car crashes due to texting and other distracting activities. Distraction.gov states that the number has been increasing steadily over the years. In 2012, 3,328 people died from car crashes due to distracted driving. In the same year, a total of 421,000 people were also injured in incidents involving distracted driving.
A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine also warned that distracted drivers don't look at road 10 percent of the time.
