Texting can terminate Lives!

A simulation study at the Monash University Accident Research Centre provided strong evidence that retrieving and, in particular, sending text messaged jeopardised safety precautions needed while driving. Negative responses were noticed in detecting and responding correctly to road signs, identifying hazards and being fully conscious of the environment from the driver’s seat, though no difference was noticed in mean speed, speed variability, and following distance. Another exclusive simulation study at the University of Utah, the results of which is yet to made published found a six fold increase in distraction-related accidents when texting.

In a study conducted in North America 89% of U.S. adults think that text messaging while driving is "distracting, dangerous and should be outlawed. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has released polling data that show that 87% of people consider texting and e-mailing while driving a "very serious" safety threat, almost equivalent to the 90% of those polled who consider drunk driving a threat. Despite being aware of the dangers of texting while, behind the wheel, 50 percent of drivers of age 16 to 24 and 22 percent of drivers of age 35 to 44 have admitted to texting while driving,

The psychological impacts and loss of life owing to accidents resulting from texting while driving, has assumed enormous significance. The 2008 Will Smith movie Seven Pounds deals with Smith's character committing suicide in order to donate his organs to help save the lives of seven people to make up for the seven people he killed in a car accident because he was receiving a text message while he was driving. This is a perfect example for portraying the ill effects of texting while driving.

After a series of highly publicized car crashes were caused by texting drivers, the new phenomenon of texting while driving attracted interest in the media, including a May 2009 incident involving a Boston trolley car driver who crashed while texting his girlfriend. Texting was blamed in the 2008 Chatsworth train collision which killed 25 passengers. Investigations revealed that the engineer of that train had sent 45 text messages while operating the train that fateful day.

On July 27, 2009, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute released preliminary findings of their study of driver distraction in commercial vehicles. Two studies, comprising about 200 long-haul trucks driving 3 million combined miles, used video cameras to observe the drivers and road; researchers observed 4,452 safety-critical events, which includes crashes, near crashes, safety-critical events, and lane deviations. 81% of the safety critical events had some type of driver distraction.

Text messaging had the greatest relative risk, with drivers being 23 times more likely to experience a safety-critical event when texting. The study also found that drivers typically take their eyes off the forward roadway for an average of four out of six seconds when texting, and an average of 4.6 out of the six seconds surrounding safety-critical events.