According to AAA, a vehicle travelling at 60 mph travels the length of one-and-a-half football fields in six seconds. That’s more than enough time to turn your head and talk to a passenger in your vehicle, or look down at a recently received text message, or even snap a picture of yourself while you’re driving. But as so many of our readers know, even taking your eyes away from the road for a few seconds can be dangerous and can even lead to serious, if not fatal, accidents.
This is often why so much stress is put on texting and driving. Considered among most people to be one of the more reckless things a person can do while behind the wheel, texting and driving has become somewhat of an epidemic across the nation and is even a problem here in Pennsylvania as well. According to an article in the Los Angeles Magazine, in 2012, more than 400,000 people were injured in accidents associated with distracted driving.
But it’s not just texting and driving that can result in distracted driving accidents. The new popular trend of taking “selfies” behind the wheel should also raise concerns across the nation because taking these pictures can be just as distracting as sending a text. In some cases, people are then uploading those pictures directly to sites like Instagram and Twitter, further taking their eyes off of the road and possible heading towards danger.
It’s worth noting though that there are laws in place in many states that make using a cellphone behind the wheel of a moving vehicle a punishable offense. This means that if someone does unfortunately cause a crash, the driver who was texting could still face charges and the accident victim would have grounds for civil litigation if they wanted to hold the driver accountable later on.