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The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and AAA are concerned about your safety on our nation’s roads. That’s why we are calling on drivers to eliminate distractions in the car. We want drivers to put away distractions and focus only on the road. Multi-tasking is undoubtedly a regular activity for most people but it is critical that we remind ourselves of the most important task behind the wheel – driving safely. Share the message, spread the word, and help us create safer roads for everyone.
Distracted driving contributes to up to 8,000 crashes every single day – the facts speak for themselves:
- More than one million people have died in car crashes over the past 25 years in the U.S., with 33,788 lives lost in 2010 alone.
- Drivers spend more than half their time behind the wheel engaged in distracted behavior.
- Using a cell phone while driving quadruples your risk of crashing.
- Eating, smoking, adjusting music or rubbernecking while driving can be just as dangerous as texting, emailing or talking on a cell phone.
- Passengers are one of the most frequently reported causes of distraction, with young children being four times more distracting than adults and infants being eight times more distracting.
A majority of drivers – 94% – agree that texting or emailing while driving is unacceptable and 87% support laws against reading, typing or sending text messages or emails while driving, according to the AAA Foundation’s 2011 Traffic Safety Culture Index, yet more than one-third of drivers reported texting or emailing while driving in the previous month. This “do as I say, not as I do” attitude is one of the greatest obstacles preventing us from improving safety on our roads.
Multi-tasking is a fact of life – we all face constant demands for our time, and we all have to juggle more now than ever before. Unfortunately, many people try to multi-task while driving, which is NEVER a good idea. In fact, a recent study by the University of Utah has reconfirmed that our brains are simply not wired to multi-task. Being distracted behind the wheel for even just a few seconds greatly increases your chance of a crash. Take a look at our 10 quick and easy ways to minimize distractions to keep yourself and all of us safer on the roads.
It’s time that we all stop ignoring the facts and take action to change our roads. The first step is changing our own attitudes, and more importantly driving our own behaviors. Distracted driving is the cause of thousands of preventable injuries each year and has cost many families the life of a loved one. You can start solving the problem by pledging to change your own behavior and drive distraction-free from now on and then sharing this pledge with friends and family.
 
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