Obvious Study: Texting while driving increases likeliness of an accident
Here’s something that is ridiculously obvious but still needed some official study to make it official: Texting while driving will increase the likeliness that you will get into a crash.
This study comes to us from the Virgina Tech Transportation Institute that suggests texting while driving will increase your chance of crashing by 23x. To put this into perspective, the NHTSA says that driving while on the phone or with a .08 blood-alcohol level only increases your chance of a crash by 4x.
This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone as when you’re texting your eyes are situated on the handset rather than the road for prolonged periods. The bad news is that this will be extremely hard to police as those who text usually keep the phone in their laps or otherwise out of view from those looking into the car.
Read (New York Times)
Tags: Driving, nhtsa, safety hazard, study, Texting, virgina tech transportation institute