Talking on a hand-held cellphone while driving is banned in 10 states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Washington, and West Virginia) and the District of Columbia.
Text messaging is banned for all drivers in 39 states and the District of Columbia.
DOT reports that in 2010:
- 3092 people were killed in crashes involving a distracted driver and an estimated additional 416,000 were injured;
- 18% of injury crashes in 2010 were reported as distraction-affected crashes;
- Drivers who use hand-held devices are 4 times more likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves;
- Text messaging creates a crash risk 23 times worse than driving while not distracted;
- Driving while using a cell phone reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving by 37%.
Many localities have enacted their own bans on cellphones or text messaging, too.
Where do you stand on this issue?
More importantly, do your supervisors and employees know?
Finding talented and skilled workers is already difficult. Lets help them stay alive and keep our roads safe.
Train and enforce “no distracted driving,” to your staff. On and off the job.
And be a good example- don’t drive distracted yourself.
As we said in an earlier post:
For Executives/Administrators/Managers, motor vehicle incidents had the highest total societal costs for 1999– 2001.
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