(Source: The FastLane Blog)

Sec. Ray LaHood is leaving no stones unturned in his effort to fight the Distracted Driving epidemic.  I reported yesterday about his efforts to team-up with ESPN and State Farm, taking the STOP DISTRACTED DRIVING message on road to 19 cities.  It is better and better by the day! In his blog post today, he announced that USDOT is expanding this initiative to involve private employers from around the country.  Laudable effort!

In 2008, nearly 6,000 people in America died in crashes involving a distracted driver. It is a serious, life-threatening epidemic, and DOT cannot fight it alone.

One of the most important sources of support has been private employers. Businesses across the US have begun to adopt policies against distracted driving.

But many employers have not yet taken this crucial step to protect themselves and their staff. That’s why, as Drive Safely Work Week (October 4-8) approaches, the Network of Employers for Traffic Safety (NETS) has prepared a free, web-based toolkit to help employers take the crucial next step.

Click here to read the entire blog post

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• Lobbyists Scrap Plans for Distracted Driving Coalition (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Lobbyists Try to Reframe Distracted Driving Issue (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
• LaHood, Sparks Team Up Against Texting And Driving (techdailydose.nationaljournal.com)
• 86 Percent of Teens Have Driven While Distracted, According to AAA and Seventeen Magazine Survey (prnewswire.com)
• Survey: Most teens have driven while distracted (news.cnet.com)
• Employers Pay Attention to Distracted Driving (eon.businesswire.com)
• Network of Employers for Traffic Safety and U.S. Department of Transportation Team to Offer Free On-line Resource to Battle Distracted Driving and Improve Employee Safety (eon.businesswire.com)

(Sources: The Inspiration Room & @Kiruba)

Source: Bangalore City Traffic Police via The Inspiration Room

I got this above image, courtesy of friend a (@Kiruba),  which I consider to be a strikingly effective capture that tells the dangers of Distracted Driving.  I was piqued by the creativity of this advertisement campaign by the Bangalore City Traffic Police (in India), and went looking for more details behind this creative effort.

Thanks to Google, I found The Inspiration Room, and got the following details along with a few more gruesome, yet effective pictures from this brilliant campaign.    These images capture the dangers of Distracted Driving, telling the story from the other side of the conversation a.k.a the non-Driver’s point of view.

Source: Bangalore City Traffic Police via The Inspiration Room

Source: Bangalore City Traffic Police via The Inspiration Room

Summary of the Project:

The outdoor advertising campaign uses disturbing photography to shock people out of talking to their friends and families on the phone while they are driving. Men and women are shown grimacing as blood spurts out from their telephones. The tag line: “Don’t talk while he drives. ”  IMHO, this is probably one of the best advertisement campaigns EVER devised to combat Distracted Driving, and ranks way up there along with the  famous British PSA video on dangers of Texting While Driving.

The Creative Team:

Developed at Mudra Group, India, by executive creative director Joono Simon, art director Vinci Raj, copywriter Akhilesh Bagri, photographer Mallikarjun Katakol, with retouching by Sathish.

(Source: Mashable; Washington Post; Pew Research Center)

Image Courtesy: Pew Research Center

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has just published the results of a study on distracted driving behavior amongst teenagers which shows that teens are aware of the dangers of texting while driving, but they choose to do it anyway.

After surveying 800 teens in 4 US cities over the summer of 2009, Pew estimates that 26% of all American teens 16-17 have texted while driving, and 43% have talked on a cell phone while driving.

Even more alarming is that 48% of teens 12-17 have witnessed someone else texting while driving, which points to an ambivalence and acceptance of the practice. The findings also indicate that even state laws prohibiting these activities may not be discouraging newly licensed drivers from using their mobile devices while behind the wheel.

Here are the major findings from the survey and focus groups (courtesy of Pew Research Center):

• 75% of all American teens ages 12-17 own a cell phone, and 66% use their phones to send or receive text messages.
• Older teens are more likely than younger teens to have cell phones and use text messaging; 82% of teens ages 16-17 have a cell phone and 76% of that cohort are cell phone texters.
• One in three (34%) texting teens ages 16-17 say they have texted while driving. That translates into 26% of all American teens ages 16-17.
• Half (52%) of cell-owning teens ages 16-17 say they have talked on a cell phone while driving. That translates into 43% of all American teens ages 16-17.
• 48% of all teens ages 12-17 say they have been in a car when the driver was texting.
• 40% say they have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put themselves or others in danger.

The NHTSA said that 5,870 people died and an estimated 515,000 were injured last year in accidents that police attributed to distracted driving.

That number of fatalities last year was exactly half the number of people who died as a result of drunken driving. The actual number of distracted-driving deaths and injuries is probably much higher than the numbers show. There is nothing like the blood alcohol test to prove that someone was texting — phone records are not clear-cut proof and drivers who cause accidents are no more prone to admit they were texting than they are to say they are drunk.

At a conference he convened to discuss distracted driving, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood stressed the importance of parents paying attention to the road to provide a positive example for their children.

The Pew research found that too few do.

“The frequency of teens reporting parent cellphone use behind the wheel in our focus groups was striking, and suggested, in many cases, that texting while driving is a family affair,” the report said.

Click here to read the entire research report in HTML.   Or you can alternatively download/read the report in the PDF format shown below.

(Source: Wired)

The senate, the Department of Transportation and the FCC want you to stop texting while driving, and on Wednesday, they all but declared a war on texting, promising education campaigns and laws to convince you to put your phone down — at least while you are piloting a two-ton SUV going 70 mph.

In a Senate hearing Wednesday, using a mobile phone while driving was said to be more dangerous than drunk driving, the cause of 16 percent of fatal accidents in the United States and a “perfect storm” of distraction.

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood concluded his testimony by calling texting while driving a “menace to society,” saying the department’s research showed that 6,000 people a year died because it distracted drivers of all kinds. Here are some excerpts from the Secretary’s blog on this topic:

Here’s a start: Experts agree that there are three types of distraction–

Visual – taking your eyes off the road;

Manual – taking your hands off the wheel; and

Cognitive – taking your mind off the road.

While all distractions can adversely impact safety, texting is particularly troubling because it involves all three types of distraction. In the words of Dr. John Lee of the University of Wisconsin, this produces a “perfect storm.”

Not convinced? Our latest research shows that nearly 6,000 people died last year in crashes involving a distracted driver, and more than half a million people were injured.

At issue is the Distracted Driving Prevention Act of 2009 (.pdf) that Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) and Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) introduced Wednesday that seeks to ban texting while driving, a category that includes using a PDA, checking e-mail on a BlackBerry or manipulating a GPS unit with your hand. The bill (S. 1938) also targets drivers who make calls without using a headset. Texting or calling while pulled over on the side of the road is fine, but not while at a red light.  

Rockefeller noted  “Nowadays, you have to text or you are not with it — you are not educated. But it’s lethal behavior when you get in a car.”   He wants some sort of phone-blocking device installed in cars, presumably one that knows the difference between a driver’s phone and passengers’ phones.

Rockefeller seemed to recognize that perhaps the only thing more dangerous than texting while driving is trying to take the media spotlight from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York), and so let him testify at the hearing on the Rockefeller-Lautenberg bill because Schumer had introduced the Alert Drivers Act earlier this year.

By contrast Schumer’s bill would withhold 25 percent of federal transportation funding from states that don’t implement strong anti-texting while driving rules, a tactic Congress has used in the past to force states to lower their speed limits and raise the drinking age to 21.