April was Distracted Driving Awareness Month, and so there are a few interesting articles that came out recently on the subject.

An article came out near the end of April this year on www.npr.com about a device called the textalyzer. It’s similar to that of a breathalyzer, but instead of looking for your alcohol content percentage it would look at your phone log. It would see if you were recently on your phone texting, calling or posting/looking at your social media. Is this what we want? Will this actually help us decrease distracted driving? The concept seems great, but who knows how well it will actually work.

Nowadays it seems that people can use Siri for their needs (send a text message, start a phone call, etc.) as well as Apple CarPlay and Hands free technologies. Is it really just the handheld devices that are distracting us as much as we are distracting ourselves? If these devices do come about, Police will have the ability to hook up a cord to your phone to check a log that will develop with time stamps to see what you were doing and when. Seems unfair if you were abiding by the law and using Hands free technology. Distracted driving is a concern and it would be great to find a solution, but do not think this is the answer.

Another article had some statistics on certain states and which have the highest rate of distracted driving accidents. The articles explains how that corresponds with which states have a ban on cell phone usage while driving. Surprisingly, not all states have this ban. According to the New York Post, “On average, drivers spent 3.5 minutes per hour on their phones…2-second distraction increases the likelihood of a crash by 20 times”.

It seems to be that Vermont takes the lead with the most distracted driving accidents. Next to Vermont would be Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas and Oklahoma. All of these states do not have bans on using a hand-held cellphone in the car while driving.

Sources: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/04/27/525729013/textalyzer-aims-to-curb-distracted-driving-but-what-about-privacy ; http://nypost.com/2017/04/17/a-disturbing-number-of-people-still-use-cellphones-while-driving/