Items Tagged with 'texting'

April is Distracted Driving Awareness month, and the U.S. Department of Transportation is using the occasion to undertake an aggressive campaign, running today through April 15, to ticket drivers who are texting or talking on their cell phones while they’re driving.

Forget teenagers. Adults are the biggest texting-while-driving problem in the USA. What's worse — they know it's wrong. Almost half of all adults admit to texting while driving in a survey by AT&T provided to USA TODAY, compared with 43% of teenagers. More than 98% of adults — almost all of them — admit they know it's wrong.

It’s official: Americans are ignoring the warnings about the dangers of distracted driving and continuing to use their cell phones while behind the wheel. A new survey by the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) -- released in conjunction with National Distracted Driving Awareness Month -- shows that at any given daylight moment across America, approximately 660,000 drivers are using cell phones or manipulating electronic devices while driving.

Every day in the U.S., 9 people are killed and more than 1,060 are injured in crashes that involve distracted driving, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Using a cell phone, texting, and eating are all forms of distracted driving, but so are in-vehicle technologies such as navigation systems.

With laws in 39 states prohibiting texting while driving, there’s considerable agreement that the practice is dangerous. How to enforce such bans, though, is a process that is still under development.

The DOT is partnering with the FOX TV show Glee to help warn young drivers about the dangers of texting or talking on a cell phone while driving.

U.S. high school students have shown significant progress over the past two decades in improving many health-risk behaviors associated with the leading cause of death among youth—motor vehicle crashes—according to the 2011 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) released recently by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has released a “Blueprint for Ending Distracted Driving” that offers a comprehensive strategy to address the growing and dangerous practice of using handheld cell phones behind the wheel.

Is distracted driving really a problem?
Distracted driving kills. The friends, family, and neighbors of the thousands of people killed each year in distracted driving crashes will tell you it is a very serious safety problem. The nearly half a million people injured each year will agree.