Posts Tagged ‘distracted driving’
P&A Applauds LaHood on “Blueprint for Ending Distracted Driving
We all know better.
A recent telephone survey conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that 90 percent of respondents considered a driver reading or sending texts and emails to be very unsafe. At the same time, respondents admitted to few circumstances when they themselves would not text or use their phone while driving. Perhaps that explains why in 2010, at least 3,092 people were killed due to distracted driving. That’s one in every 10 fatalities on America’s roads.
Those statistics were noted last week in Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s press release announcing the launch of his “Blueprint for Ending Distracted Driving.” Among its efforts, the new plan encourages the 11 states without distracted driving laws to get them on the books, asks the auto industry to develop safety standards to ensure devices don’t cause distraction behind the wheel, and provides educational material to young drivers, who are most likely to engage in distracted driving.
More information on this effort and others can be found on www.distraction.gov.
The issue of distracted driving has become one of the great public health and safety concerns of our time. We are proud that Secretary LaHood has thrown down the gauntlet. Let’s all rise to the challenge.
April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month
Today, I was driving on Georgia 400 during rush hour when I noticed that the man in the lane to my left, that is to say, the fast lane, had hung his head, focused intently and extensively on dialing. I wanted to honk, to alert him to the fact that his eyes were on his lap instead of the road on which he was driving at top speeds, but I feared startling him and prompting the feared accident.
We have an occasion this month to ramp up the word about the rules of the road. April marks Distracted Driving Awareness Month for a reason. As technology offers us more opportunity than ever to connect constantly, we must disconnect while driving.
Let’s see.. lots of us jostling alongside each other at high speeds in heavy metal — well, that’s a sport that requires our full attention. When we’re driving robotic smart cars that drive themselves, we’ll revisit this. But for now, we still need to exercise caution and control over our vehicles.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood blogged today about a powerful program at a Rockville, Md. high school where students simulate the experience of losing a classmate every 15 minutes. The program was originally intended to demonstrate the fact an American is killed every15 minutes in an impaired-driving crash. But these days, texting and driving has been added to the program, as Secretary LaHood writes in his blog:
Kudos to Secretary LaHood for calling attention to this grave issue and to the students at Rockville High School for programming that drives home the danger of impaired and distracted driving.
When driving, let’s remember to use our phones in case of emergency, not to cause one.
