It only takes five seconds from the moment you open up your text message to get into a car accident.
People may feel very confident that they are able to text and drive smoothly. Quite a few teens have confessed that they know texting and driving is unsafe but think it’s safer for them to hold their phone up so they can see the road and text at the same time. It only takes a minor jerk of the wheel to send your car flying in the wrong direction.
Some teenagers have said that they see their parent’s texting and driving, so it must be okay. That is not the case. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your age happens to be; you are still vulnerable to serious injury.
It is said that a person using a cell phone while driving, whether it’s handheld or hands-free, delays a driver’s reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent. A person that is texting while driving is 23 times more likely to get into a car accident than a non-texting driver.
Beyond the obvious dangers, texting while driving is also a serious crime. If a person is texting while driving and gets in a car accident and the other person dies, the driver texting can be charged with motor vehicular homicide by texting.
Thirty-two percent of teens who have texted while driving think nothing bad will happen to them. Thirty-six percent of teens have been in a near-crash because of their own or someone else’s texting and driving.
There is an app for your smartphone that prohibits the use of your phone while driving, called DriveMode. It will block signal from incoming text messages while in the car. That way you will not be tempted to check your messages.
One text message is not worth risking your life, so think before driving while intexticated.