• 24
  • February
    2011

Although distracted driving may seem like a fairly recent buzzword, Pennsylvania State Police have been familiar with distracted driving as a cause of car accidents for quite some time. People have always wanted to multi-task in their motor vehicles, but the addition of cell phones in automobiles has increased the number of distractions and has made the problem worse.

One police officer from Mercersburg, Pennsylvania says that while there is more distracted driving now, anything drivers do in the car like eating or trying to find items in the car is just as dangerous as driving and using a cell phone. To drive the point home he offered a story when he was a state police officer in 1970. He said a young woman and 5-year-old were driving on a country road and a pretzel bag fell from the seat. The woman reached down to grab the bag and in that short moment of time the car traveled off the road and into an embankment.

When a car accident occurs, Pennsylvania State Police follow a standard protocol to ask questions whether distracted driving was involved. Officers ask whether a cell phone was in the car and then whether it was in use at the time of the accident or not. Officers say that phone calls as well as dialing and picking up and putting the phone down create room for distraction. If there is any question whether a cell phone was used, police will use phone records to get approximations of time.

According to a 2009 study conducted by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project, around 47 percent of adults text while driving and 34 percent of teenage drivers text and drive. According to the same study, three quarters of adults said they spoke on the phone while driving and just over half of teenagers reported having a phone conversation while on the road.

Source: Publicopinion.com, "Distracted driving while not a new issue, cell phone use, texting may ramp up the danger," Brian Hall, 2/21/11