everybody has probably seen this already, but WOW! Texting while driving increases the risk of an accident or near accident by 23 TIMES.
After studying the behavior of real truck drivers covering more than 6 million miles of road, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute says people who send text messages while driving are 23 times more likely to be in a crash (or what they call a near crash event) than non-distracted drivers.
To conduct the study, researchers mounted cameras inside drivers’ vehicles. They studied where drivers’ eyes were looking as they did various things, such as texting, dialing a cell phone, talking on a phone, and reaching for an object. Not surprisingly, the numbers (PDF) showed that the tasks that took people’s eyes off the road caused the greatest amount of danger. In crashes or near-crashes, texting took a driver’s focus away from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds–enough time, the report point out, to travel the length of a football field at 55 mph. By contrast, talking on a cell phone, which allows a driver to keep his eyes on the road, represented an increased risk of only 1.3 times that of a nondistracted driver.
again, WOW. how about we all keep our eyes on the road people. its a jungle out there.