{"id":5782,"date":"2013-08-29T11:11:59","date_gmt":"2013-08-29T18:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/?p=5782"},"modified":"2013-08-29T11:11:59","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T18:11:59","slug":"texting-and-driving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/blog\/car-insurance-3\/safety-blog\/texting-and-driving\/","title":{"rendered":"Texting and Driving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Driving a vehicle while text messaging is <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">six times<\/span> more dangerous than driving while intoxicated, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The agency reports that sending or receiving a text takes a driver\u2019s eyes from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds, the equivalent &#8212; when traveling at 55 mph &#8212; of driving the length of an entire football field while blindfolded.<\/p>\n<p>Texting in cars and trucks causes over 3,000 deaths and 330,000 injuries per year, according to a Harvard Center for Risk Analysis study.<\/p>\n<p>Texting while driving a vehicle has now replaced drinking while driving as the leading cause of accidents and deaths of teenage drivers. Texting in traffic isn&#8217;t simply a problem among teens &#8211; 47% of adults admit that they text while driving. Texting drivers are 23 times more likely to be involved in a crash than non-texting drivers.<\/p>\n<p>The proportion of alcohol-related traffic crash deaths has dropped 52% since 1982, and are now at historic lows, but the proportion of traffic accident fatalities that are NOT alcohol-related has jumped 78% during the same period. We\u2019re winning the war against alcohol-related traffic deaths. But texting-related traffic fatalities are epidemic \u2013 helping spread awareness of it is key.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, there\u2019s some good news. A survey conducted by NHTSA found that 90% of drivers support laws to ban texting while driving. A recent survey found that 80% of drivers support some type of cell phone usage restrictions. The majority of respondents say they are supportive of laws restricting any type of cell phone use while driving; 80% support a ban on text messaging while driving; 80% support a ban on e-mailing while driving; and almost 75% believe that restrictions should apply to all drivers, not just specific groups such as teens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Driving a vehicle while text messaging is six times more dangerous than driving while intoxicated, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The agency reports that sending or receiving a text takes a driver\u2019s eyes from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds, the equivalent &#8212; when traveling at 55 mph &#8212; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5783,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[310],"tags":[],"importance":[],"type-content":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5782"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5782"},{"taxonomy":"importance","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/importance?post=5782"},{"taxonomy":"type-content","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeway.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type-content?post=5782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}