Individuals who drive while sending or reading text messages are 23% more likely to be involved in a car crash than other drivers. A crash typically happens within an average of three seconds after a driver is distracted. Just to put in prospective, the distance covered in five seconds of driving at 55 mph is equivalent to the length of a football field. It also takes, on average, 5 seconds to read a text. In short, don’t text and drive.
Facts About Texting & Driving
- The United States Department of Transportation notes that cell phones are involved in 1.6 million auto crashes each year that cause a half million injuries and take 6,000 lives.
- According to FocusDriven®, up to 80% of all crashes involve some form of driver distraction.
- During any point of the day, 11 percent of drivers are talking on their cell phones, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
- According to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, texting while driving is six times more likely to cause an auto crash than driving when intoxicated.
- The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute installed cameras on dashboards inside truck cabs. From the video footage, on average it took five seconds with their eyes off the road when driver’s experienced distractions.
