As many of us know, texting while driving is illegal yet lots of us continue to take the risk and do just that! Road accidents can happen anywhere in the world, and at any time. It is one of the most random, split-second things that can ever occur. Everything can go wrong because of one tiny twitch of a hand at the wrong moment. People travel at such high speeds in the world now that nearly every accident is either fatal or leaves someone critically injured, or disabled.

Cell phones have made this issue even worse! The internet has taken over human minds and even the idea of being disconnected from point A to point b is a massive deal and cause people to check their phone while they’re behind the wheel. The cardinal rule of driving is to keep both hands on the wheel, and between phone calls, text messages, and even navigation systems like GPS, it is almost impossible to do so.

Some Mind Blowing Statistics:

• There are millions of people in the U.S. that are involved in road accidents each year and of these, 1.6 million have a cell phone involved in them. That’s more than half of all the road accidents in the United States. Over half the road accidents in the States have cell phones involved

• Every year, almost half a million people are injured in crashes that have involved a driver who was distracted in some way.

• Each year, over 330,000 accidents caused by texting while driving lead to severe injuries. This means that’s well over half of all distracted drivers are distracted because they have been texting while driving

• It takes an average of three seconds after a driver’s mind is taken off the road for any road accident to occur

• Reading a text message while driving successfully distracts a driver for a minimum of five seconds each time. This means that the chances of an accident occurring while reading a text is extremely high

• The average speed in the US is about 55 mph. Taking five seconds to read a text, or being distracted by so many vehicles on the road means there is a huge chance of something terrible happening in this distance.

Texting and driving aren’t just making you an irresponsible drive, but the consequences of doing so are fatal. Your friends will understand if you don’t answer right away, and they will be a lot happier to hear you were delayed answering them rather than hearing you were in an accident because you were answering them. If the message is urgent, pull over and take the call or answer the message. Other than that there is no reason to put yourself or anyone else in danger just to answer a message that says “lol okay!”

Statistics Source: https://www.icebike.org/texting-and-driving/