Stop The Texts, Stop The Wrecks
Five seconds is the minimum amount of attention that a driver who texts takes away from the road. Traveling at fifty-five miles per hour this equals driving the length of a football field without looking at the road. Texting makes a crash up to twenty-three times more likely to happen. Teens who text while driving spend ten percent of time outside their lane. According to AT&T’s teen driver survey, ninety seven percent of teens agree that texting while driving is dangerous, yet fort-three percent do it anyway. One in five drivers admit to surfing the web while driving. Thirty-nine states and DC prohibit all drivers from texting. Forty percent of teens say that they have been in a car when the driver use a cell phone. According to seventy-seven percent of teens, adults tell them not to text or email while driving, yet adults do it themselves, “All the time.” Nine in ten teens expect a reply to a text or email within five minutes or less, which puts pressure on them to respond while driving.