distracted driving

Local drivers spend five percent of driving time using their phones each day

April 19, 2017 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

It’s probably no surprise that despite horrific tales of distracted driving, Illinois continues to figure prominently on the graph of unflattering statistics.

A new study conducted by Zendrive discovered that among 3.1 million drivers and over 5.6 billion miles of driving, nearly 88 percent of those trips included at least some use of a smartphone. When extrapolated for the entire driving population of the U.S., that equals out to roughly 600 million distracted trips per day, and on average, phone use was 3.5-minutes per hour of driving.

Placing firmly on the list of offending states is Illinois, whose drivers spend more than 5 percent of driving time on the phone. That’s just below the 7.5 percent high, which belongs to Vermont. But surprisingly, Illinois is one of six states among the top 25 that enforces a ban on cell use while driving, making it one of the few in which the law doesn’t appear to discourage people from doing so. At the local level, Chicago is one of two major cities that ban cell use while driving, yet the city places in the top five of municipalities with the “most distracted” drivers.

That’s in stark contrast with six of the top ten states where people spend the least percentage of time on their phones, including Oregon and California, all of which have also passed laws imposing restrictions on phone use while driving.

Other notable stats and context from Zendrive:

Taking your eyes off the road for two seconds increases your chance of collision 20-fold

At 55 mph, two seconds is enough time to travel the length of two basketball courts

Drivers’ phone use is extremely difficult for crash investigators and traffic safety experts to measure

In 2015, 91percent of Americans owned mobile phones and drove over 3 trillion miles

In 2015, 35,092 people died in traffic, and NHTSA reported just 476 mobile phone related deaths

After a steady 40 year decline, U.S. traffic deaths shot up in 2015 and 2016, exceeding 40,000 for the first time in a decade

Woman caught texting while driving—with her feet

August 11, 2016 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

Here’s a trend we hope isn’t catching on. A woman was caught texting while speeding along the Schuylkill Expressway in Philadelphia, except it wasn’t in the way you’d expect.

The driver, seen in the video below, was videotaped texting on her phone while steering the car with her feet, as if lounging in the passenger seat. The footage, which was captured by Sarah and Shawn Delong, lasts less than 30 seconds but the Delongs told Action News in Philadelphia that they continued to follow the woman for a good 20 minutes before finally getting her attention.

“At one point we beeped at her and I yelled ‘get off your phone!’ Sarah explained to Action News. “And she looked and smirked at me and went right back to doing whatever it was on her phone.”

The Delongs recorded the woman’s license plate and passed it along to the Pennsylvania Sate Police. No word yet on whether the woman faced any consequences.

It’s hardly the first time this has happened. Last week, a Colorado woman was caught texting while speeding down I-25 with one leg propped up on the dashboard. The sequence was captured by another driver and shared on Facebook. The video was picked up by several local news outlets and has been viewed thousands of times.

The lack of awareness or care for themselves or their fellow drivers is astounding. Distracted driving accounts for a significant number of fatal crashes in the United States. One out four car crashes in the U.S. are caused by texting while driving; and every year, roughly 421,000 people are injured in crashes that involves a driver who was distracted in some way.

But what’s shocking about these videos is the recklessness that makes these dangers all the more real and terrifying. It’s an avoidable situation that continues to be more troubling as people disregard the fatal potential of their actions. I doubt the clients we’ve worked with, who have lost loved ones because of distracted driving, would disagree. There’s just no excuse for this kind of behavior.

Let’s hope it stops.