file photo by Boyd Loving
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, distracted driving is one of the major causes of road accidents. Zutobi (an e-learning platform that helps inexperienced drivers learn the road) recently published a report ( https://zutobi.com/us/driver-guides/distracted-driving-report ) on distracted driving in the U.S. In that report New Jersey had the second highest ratio of fatal crashes due to distraction.
The top three were New Mexico with the highest rate of fatal crashes due to distracted driving in various age groups. According to statistics by NHTSA, New Mexico reported 137 distracted driving crashes in 2019 leading to a staggering 37.2% of all fatal crashes having an element of distracted driving in them. The second worst state is New Jersey (24.6%), followed by Hawaii (24.5%).
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) divides the most common driver distractions into several categories – these include distractions that happen inside the vehicle and distractions that occur outside the vehicle. The most common cause of distracted driving involves the use of cell phones.
Distracted driving is defined as driving while doing another activity that takes your attention away from driving. Due to the nature of being less focused on driving, distracted driving will drastically increase the chance of being involved in a motor vehicle crash. At 100 mph, being distracted for just 1 second will mean the vehicle travels 146 feet.
Each year, thousands of drivers and passengers are fatally injured as a result of distracted driving. In 2019, over 3,100 people in the US were killed in the 2895 fatal distracted driving crashes reported that year, and an estimated 424,000 were injured in crashes involving a distracted driver. This is an increase from 2,800 deaths in 2018.
Do you notice all the accents are current lately, I’ve got majority of them are college kids lack of experience too.
Totally agree lack of experience. Cruising around, radio blasting, on their phone, staring all over the place instead of the road. Speeding, instead of slowing down a bit and paying attention.
Kids can’t drive.
They NEED all sorts of electronic crutches and nannies just to function in a car like GPS to get ice cream in town or lane keeping assist, automated braking, adaptive cruise control, backup cameras, etc. etc. etc.
While these tools are HELPFUL, young drivers are UNABLE TO FUNCTION without them.