411 Pain – Do not Text And Drive

There is increasing alarming evidence that texting and driving can be as bad as drinking and driving.
Texting is just one example of distracted driving, but is easily acknowledged as the most dangerous of them all. Distracted driving is any activity that diverts your attention from where it should be – with your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel. Some examples of distracted driving include any use of a cellphone, eating/drinking, reading – including maps, watching tv/video, using your gps, grooming, adjusting the radio/cd/mp3 player and even talking to another passenger in the car. Because texting requires visual, manual and cognitive attention all at once, it is by far the worst of distractions.
411 Pain According to a study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI)

• Of all cell phone related tasks – including talking, dialing, or reaching for the phone – texting while driving is the most dangerous.
• One-fifth of experienced adult drivers in the United States send text messages while driving.
• Texting while driving is about 6 times more likely to result in an accident than driving while intoxicated.
• Studies have found that texting while driving causes a 400% increase in time spent with eyes off the road.
• For every 6 seconds of drive time, a driver sending or receiving a text message spends 4.6 of those seconds with their eyes off the road. This makes texting the most distracting of all cell phone related tasks.

Answering a text takes about 5 seconds – enough time to drive the length of a football field. That is enough time to be fatal.
In 2010, there were more than 3,000 fatalities and 400,000 injuries involving a distracted driver, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
If reading or sending a text is urgent, pull off the road in a safe spot. Your life is worth it!
411 PAIN – the leader in road safety awareness, urges you to PLEASE – DO NOT TEXT AND DRIVE!