According to some safety experts, a more dangerous issue than drinking and driving puts motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists at risk, and a greater number of people participate in this dangerous activity than drive under the influence. People who use cell phones while they drive far outnumber those who drink and drive, according to safety statistics, and distracted drivers have been proven to be equally dangerous behind the wheel.
More than two weeks of focused effort on the part of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol and other local law enforcement agencies resulted in 169 arrests for charges of driving under the influence of alcohol. Eight collisions injuring ten people were linked to drunken drivers during the DUI enforcement campaign, which ran from August 17 to Labor Day, September 3.
Ventura County law enforcement are reporting a 75 percent decrease in drunken driving arrests at the halfway mark of its 17-day focused DUI enforcement campaign. At this point in the 2011 campaign, California Highway Patrol officers, local police, and sheriff’s deputies had made 119 arrests for drunken driving. In comparison, officers have only made 68 arrests so far in this year’s campaign.
The TV show Mythbusters set out to determine whether talking on a cellphone while driving a vehicle is as dangerous as driving while under the influence of alcohol. The Mythbusters team decided that most people would consider operating a moving vehicle while dialing a cellphone, which takes a hand off the steering wheel and eyes off the road, dangerous but would be less likely to think of dialing a number while the car is stopped or parked and continuing the conversation while driving as hazardous behavior, and determined they would need to design a test designed to compare driving ability while impaired by alcohol with driving ability while engrossed in a phone conversation.
In order to test the theory, two members of the research team completed a driving school obstacle course three times under different conditions. First, they completed a control run through without handheld communication devices or alcoholic beverages. Then they drove through the course again while talking on handheld cell phones. Finally, they completed the course with blood alcohol contents slightly below the legal limits, as verified by a police-administered Breathalyzer test.
Each test consisted of four parts: coming to a complete stop after driving at a speed of 30 miles per hour, parallel parking, a time trial obstacle course, and an accident avoidance test. After both drivers passed the control test, they were required to complete the test while conducting a cellphone conversation requiring them to complete three tasks during each portion of the test: repeating information, solving a mental puzzle, and offering information on a given topic. Both drivers failed the test when talking on the phone. For the third test, the drivers drank alcoholic beverages on empty stomachs until their blood alcohol contents were between .07 and .075 percent, slightly lower than the .08 limit established by California state law. Both drivers also failed this test, but achieved higher scores under the influence of alcohol than they had while talking on the cellphone.
The Police Force in Glendale received a grant worth several hundred thousand dollars this week for programs designed to lower the amount of arrests made for driving while intoxicated. The grant comes after a successful campaign in which DUI arrests went down 24% in one year. Most of the money will go to pedestrian safety programs and motorcycle safety equipment for officers.
Many studies show that distracted driving truly is one of the most dangerous problems that has hit the road in recent times, experts say, and this problem does not just include people who use technology, but also those who have children in the car and those who perform other tasks behind the wheel. Some studies show distracted driving is even more dangerous than driving drunk.
The governor of Illinois has announced that September will officially be “Texting and Driving Awareness Month.” This campaign is backed by AT&T. A representative of the communication company has said that texting while driving should be deemed as unacceptable as drinking and driving. More than 100,000 car crashes are year are linked to people who text while driving, according to the company, which has declared “intexticated driving” a national epidemic.
The Traditional Student Boosters organization at Palm Harbor University High School has teamed with a local auto insurance agent to launch a safety awareness campaign designed to discourage teens and their parents from texting and driving. The “X the TEXT” program is encouraging students to sign a pledge to refrain from the distracted driving habit by providing information on the dangers created by texting drivers.
Riverside Police Department has announced an ongoing traffic safety program, designed to reduce the hazards created by drunken and distracted drivers by increasing the number of officers on patrol. Between 2006 and 2010. The enforcement effort, dubbed the Riverside County Avoid the 30 DUI Task Force, will continue until early September.
According to a recently released report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, pedestrian fatalities were 4 percent higher than the established yearly average in 2010, the last year for which these statistics are available. This increase, according to some safety experts, is due to the widespread practice of distracted driving habits such as texting behind the wheel, which according to a study Car and Driver magazine, is provably more dangerous than drunken driving.
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