AAA RELEASES NEW DATA ON DANGERS OF TEXTING AND DRIVING

A report from AAA released recently reveals how dangerous it is to text while driving. Nearly one out of five U.S. drivers surveyed has read or sent a text message while behind the wheel, even though nearly all of the respondents in the AAA survey considered such an action unacceptable. AAA Chief Executive Robert Darbelnet, in a statement accompanying the survey, commissioned by the AAA Foundation observed:
the new technologies that helps us multitask in our lives and increasingly popular social media sites present a hard-to-resist challenge to the typically safe driver. Enacting texting bans for drivers in all 50 states can halt the spread of this dangerous practice nationwide and is a key legislative priority for AAA.

18% said they had sent a text message while driving within a month of being surveyed. In a survey commissioned by Ford Motor Co. it was reported that 93% of 1,000 licensed drivers supported a nationwide ban on texting while behind the wheel.

58,790 people were killed and 515,000 injured lst year in vehicle crashes connected to driver distraction. Driver distraction was involved in 16% of all fatal crashes in 2008. The greatest proportion of distracted drivers were those age 20 and under.

The National Safety Council wants a total ban on cell phone use while driving. Other groups have focused on texting, which has grown from nearly 10 billion messages a month in December 2005 to more than 110 billion in December 2008.
Source: Insurance Journal