It should come as no surprise to anyone who travels Valley roads that the problem of texting while behind the wheel is getting worse.
Though texting while driving is against the law, police have a hard time catching violators. The general public puts more eyes on the road than any police force. We see it. We shake our heads at it. And we’re guilty of it.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that nearly 3,500 people died in crashes last year in the U.S. and Puerto Rico that were determined to involve distracted drivers.
Only a portion of those crashes involved illegal use of cellphones by drivers, but the numbers are rising year to year. The safety group linked 476 fatal crashes in 2015 to phone use, compared to 406 in 2014.
The actual number is probably higher and will go up as people’s devotion to their smartphones intensifies.
Cellphone use generally, including calls themselves, is cited as a distraction in 1.6 million crashes a year, according to the National Safety Council. The group says one in four accidents is caused by texting while driving, injuring 330,000 people yearly.
And yet the practice grows.
As an Associated Press story noted this week, people who text while driving are becoming more brazen, despite the fact that 46 states ban it.
And they are sneakier. They try to evade being seen by holding their phones at lap-level rather than up against the steering wheel, a habit that pulls their vision further off the road and intensifies the distraction.
Safety advocates say drivers who text typically look away for five seconds. That’s long enough, when traveling 55 miles per hour, to cover the length of a football field.
Police departments are shaping imaginative ways to catch violators. The AP story noted that an officer in West Bridgewater is climbing aboard a bike to catch drivers who text; he rolls up next to them with a surprise: a ticket for $105 for breaking a law and putting people at risk.
Other departments are even more creative. In Maryland, an officer masqueraded as a homeless man at a corner, giving him a vantage point to spot unsuspecting drivers using their phones. In that effort, the officer radioed on to officers in wait. In just two hours last October, the department handed out 56 tickets.
And down in Tennessee, state police in Chattanooga are patrolling in big rigs. The fuel bill must sting, but troopers who ride up high in tractor-trailer trucks can more easily see into vehicles and spot drivers texting.
Even without special deployments, police in Massachusetts have been issuing more tickets for texting while driving – 6,100 last year compared to 1,100 in 2011.
Distracted driving is no joke. When the hazards of drunken-driving were made plain decades ago, grassroots groups rose up to fight it, and to establish that behavior as heinous and anti-social.
Drivers who are sober but aren’t paying attention to the road can do just as much damage. That’s why some refer to it as “driving while intexticated.”
In blatant denial, drivers who text never think they’ll be the one to hit the child who ran into the street as they searched for “send.” That they will be the one to side-swipe the bicyclist. That they will rear-end the motorcyclist who braked at a changing traffic light.
But then they will have injured someone, perhaps grievously, in an accident that could have been avoided.
Drivers, do everyone a favor. When making that commute to work, leave the phone in your bag, not on the passenger seat. Turn it off so the “ding” doesn’t tempt you for miles.
Chances are the message is beyond inconsequential – a friend’s status update that changes nothing, an email from your cell provider noting you’ve gone over your data limit.
In our information age, some information barely qualifies as such. Watch the road.
Live and let live.
The highway signs about texting have it exactly right: It can wait.