The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) mission is to “save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes.” With that as its mission, it's no surprise that the NHTSA has begun to focus on how to eliminate car accidents that are caused by "driver distraction." In fact in 2009, the NHTSA reported that 20% of car accidents with personal injuries involved distracted driving.
While more people are becoming aware of the dangers of driving while texting, or driving while talking on their cell phone, there are several other distractions that drivers commonly encounter every time they get behind the wheel -including eating and drinking, grooming, and using a navigation system. However, some of the latest government research suggests that the distraction most associated with crashes is when a driver is engaged in a conversation -even though a driver's eyes might be looking forward their mind is elsewhere. According to the NHTSA, there are three types of driver distraction that lead to crashes:
- Visual distraction: Tasks that require the driver to look away from the roadway to visually obtain information;
- Manual distraction: Tasks that require the driver to take a hand off the steering wheel and manipulate a device;
- Cognitive distraction: Tasks that are defined as the mental workload associated with a task that involves thinking about something other than the driving task.
As you can see from this video the toll of distracted driving is devastating:
If you or a loved one has been injured by a distracted driver, you should consider hiring a personal injury trial lawyer to help hold that driver accountable -not only for your sake, but so that the word will spread through your community that distracted driving is, in the words of the NHTSA, "a serious, life-threatening practice and we will not rest until we stop it."
