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Monday, November 20, 2017

The Dangers of Driving While Distracted

(Click on the image for the Consumer Reports article)
  • Five-year-old Moriah Modisette died one Christmas Eve after a distracted driver plowed into the back of her family’s car on a Texas highway, according to police reports.
    Garrett Wilhelm, 20 at the time, was accused of video chatting on his smartphone when traffic ahead of him slowed. The police say he didn’t notice and slammed into the Modisettes’ car at full speed. The force of the collision caused the car to spin, coming to rest facing the wrong direction in traffic.
  • Does enforcement make a difference? The police conducted high-visibility enforcement campaigns in Syracuse, N.Y., and Hartford, Conn., in 2010 and 2011. These efforts were paid for, in part, by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The police in Syracuse used roving patrols to spot offenders, and Hartford police used a spotter technique with two patrol cars working together. The percentage of drivers observed to be texting or dialing in Hartford fell to 1.1 percent from 3.9 percent in a little more than a year. Drivers cited for texting tended to commit other violations, such as drifting across lanes or weaving, as a result of their distraction.
    But the final report concluded that motorists were willing to continue texting while driving even while agreeing in surveys that the police should enforce texting restrictions.