As any auto accident attorney will tell you, texting while driving is on the rise. While official numbers are hard to come by, the car accident lawyers of the world report a steady increase in the number of distracted driving victims coming through their doors week after week.
While drunk driving rates have declined sharply in recent decades, distracted driving is becoming incredibly common. So common, in fact, that you’re almost certain to pass a distracted or texting driver if you drive more than a few miles at a time. According to some estimates, there are 660,000 drivers using some kind of electronic device at any given point of the day, and using these devices increases your accident risk three times.
That’s why every state has passed some kind of traffic ordinance that bans texting while driving, and police departments are urging drivers to go hands free while behind the wheel. So why do auto accident attorneys have so many distracted driving victims in their officers?
Unfortunately, there’s little evidence that texting bans actually make us safer.
Consider the bike helmet.
While you might assume that states with mandatory bike helmet laws decrease the number of bicycle injuries, the numbers suggest the opposite is true. After such laws are passed, many people will choose not to ride a bicycle at all if they don’t have a helmet handy. Ultimately, that leads to less bikers on the road, and when drivers aren’t used to sharing the road with cyclists, dangerous bike accidents actually increase.
So when states first passed hands-free laws, many people simply started holding their phones in their lap while texting to avoid detection. This actually increases the level of distraction!
So while hands-free laws and bans on texting while driving haven’t yet decreased the rates of such accidents, they are still a necessary form of public safety. It helps the police, personal injury lawyers, and auto accident lawyers hold irresponsible drivers accountable, and public awareness campaigns that support these laws spread a valuable message.
As we’ve entered the information age, technology has taken over our lives. There are always new devices to distract us, more emails to answer, more texts to send. Until people finally accept that texting while driving is never a good decision, car accident lawyers are going to have their hands full.