Distracted In Amanda Clark's Car Accidents

“Amanda Clark’s phone conversation came to an abrupt end when her Chevrolet Trailblazer rolled three times before landing on its roof. She’d run a stop sign and was broadsided by another driver. Metal caved in around her but the roof stayed intact and she survived with just scrapes and bruises” (Tracy). This story of Amanda Clark’s car accident caused by distracted driving is common among people. “In 2014, 3,179 people were killed, and 431,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes involving distracted drivers (“Distracted Driving: Facts”).” In Idaho, between the years of 2010-2014, distracted driving caused 1,557 serious injury crashes and 207 fatal crashes. Two hundred twenty-three people were killed and 2,018 people were injured ("Distracted
Crash Summary"). Distracted driving contributes to almost 1 of every three fatal or serious injury crashes ("Highway Safety"). “A 2015 Erie Insurance distracted driving survey reported that drivers do all sorts of dangerous things behind the wheel including brushing teeth and changing clothes. The survey also found that one-third of drivers admitted to texting while driving and three-quarters saying they’ve seen others do it” (“Distracted Driving: Facts”). Distracted drivers endanger the public and inadvertently kill people.
“Distraction is defined by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as a specific type of inattention that occurs when drivers divert their attention away from the task of driving to focus on another activity instead” (“Highway Safety”).
There are three types of distracted driving visual, manual, and cognitive. Visual distracted driving is when a driver takes his or her eyes off the road. Examples of visual distracted driving are reading billboards, looking at a GPS, or looking at something on the car floor. Manual distracted driving is when a driver takes his or her hands off the steering wheel. Putting on make-up or changing the radio are examples of manual distracted driving. Cognitive distracted driving is when one takes their mind off the road. Examples of cognitive distracted driving are daydreaming, and focusing on
emotions. One of the main sources of distraction while driving these days is cell phone use, particularly texting. Texting is especially dangerous with texting and driving because it combines all three types of distracted driving. To text while driving one is looking at his or her phone, which takes his or her eyes off the road, his or her hands are holding the phone, which takes his or her hands off the wheel and they are reading or responding to a text, which takes their mind off the road. Having all three types of distraction at once is particularly dangerous. A driver is 12 times more likely to crash when he or she reaches for their phone to check a text message and 16 times more likely when he or she respond to the text (Tracy). In an interview with Local News 8, Captain Eric Dayley of the Idaho State Police said, "On the interstate, with the speed limit at 80 miles per hour, you're traveling 120 feet per second, roughly. And so if you look down for just that long [a second], you've gone 120 feet down the road and that could be very dangerous, very problematic” (Inglet). Many people think that sending messages by voice to text is safer then manually texting, but this is not true.
A study conducted by Christine Yager, at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute found that drivers are just as distracted by sending messages by voice to text as sending manual text messages. With both types of texting, drivers took twice as long to react compared to when they were not texting. The study also found that the amount of time that drivers spent looking at the roadway ahead was significantly less when they were texting, no matter which texting method was used ("Voice-To-Text"). Drivers reported that they felt less safe when they were texting, but felt safer when using voice-to-text application than when they were texting manually, even though driving performance suffered equally with both methods ("Voice-to-Text").
In 2012 Taylor Sauer, a college student at Utah State University, was making a late night 4 hour drive back home to Caldwell, Idaho. While driving along I-84 she passed the time by messaging a friend on Facebook about the Denver Broncos football team. But she stopped short, writing in her final missive, "I can't discuss this now. Driving and facebooking is not safe! Haha." Moments after this message was sent, going over 80 miles per hour, Sauer slammed into a tanker trucker creeping up the hill at 15 miles per hour. She was killed instantly. Investigator found no sign that she applied her brakes, and checking her phone records they learned that Sauer was posting about every 90 seconds during her drive. At the time of Sauer’s accident, Idaho did not have a texting and driving law in place. Clay Sauer, Taylor's father, said, "Kids think they're invincible. To them, (texting) is not distracting; they're so proficient at texting, that they don't feel it's distracted driving” (Inbar). Unfortunately, Taylor Sauer is part of this statistic. Her future seemed a sky-is-the-limit proposition: She graduated high school with a sparkling 3.9 grade point average, was class salutatorian, played first base on her softball team and was active in community charities. After she was named a National Merit Scholar, she told a local TV station, 'I want to go even further and take on the world’” (Inbar). Distracted driving effects everyone, and his or her families. Taylor Sauer's family testified before the Idaho State Legislature as the legislature was considering a texting-while-driving ban. Taylor's little sister told the legislature that Taylor would "would never be her bride’s maid” (Inbar). While texting and driving is, a common form of distracted driving it is not the only one. Eating while driving is almost as dangerous as texting while driving, and is just as common if not more as texting and driving.
A study done by Lytx, a global leader in video-based driver safety technology, found that eating or drinking while driving is nearly as dangerous as any cell phone distraction.
“Drivers with food or drink distractions are 3.6 times more likely to be involved in a collision than drivers who do not eat and drink while driving. Drivers with smartphone or tablet distraction are 4.7 times more likely to be involved in a collision than drivers who did not use their cellular handheld device” (Griswold). There is only a small difference of 1.1 between these two numbers. Del Lisk the vice president of Safety Services for Lyx said, “We know that distracted driving is a significant factor in vehicle collisions, and our predictive analytics show that distractions such as eating or drink or smartphones and tablets are among the leading causes of collisions. Everyone should think about that the next time they are unwrapping a burrito on the freeway” (Griswold). Eating while driving is a common sight to see when passing other drivers, but one of the other major distractions drivers have to deal with can’t be seen by a passing
car. Emotions are a type of cognitive distracted driving. Mirriam-Webster defines emotion as,” a conscious mental reaction (as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body.” The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute did a study on how emotions effect one’s driving ability. The study found that “drivers increase their crash risk nearly tenfold when they get behind the wheel while observably angry, sad, crying, or emotionally agitated” (“Researchers Determine”). The physiological and behavioral changes that one’s body experiences when feeling an emotion effects his or her ability to drive safely.