Do you look at your phone while driving? Well, distracted driving kills 9 people a day. April is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month, The Automotive Club of California, the LAPD and the California Highway Patrol had an event today with nine empty chairs.
Hayes Flanagan has the story.
On a cloudy Monday morning...a couple of sun rays shine on the front of a gray car. Next to the car sit 9 chairs. On each one lies a white rose. And a photo of a person who lost their life to the dangers of distracted driving.
LAPD officers wander the quiet patio ready to discuss ways to help prevent distracted driving.
Distracted driving caused about 28,000 crashes nationwide in 2021.
Doug Shupe intends to do something about it. He’s the spokesperson for the Automotive Club of Southern California. Shupe recently did some fieldwork on the topic.
Doug Shupe: During a two day period, we went around Southern California, the auto club, with a videographer to capture how prevalent distracted driving is. We saw hundreds of drivers looking down at their smartphones, going at freeway speeds. Oftentimes, their heads were looking down for up to 5 seconds at a time.
Five seconds, that means you are not looking at the road until I speak again...(wait 5 seconds)
That’s five seconds.
Driving at 55 miles an hour. In five seconds you’ll go the length of a football field. The Auto Club of Southern California says if you have to text or call someone pull over to the side of the road and program your GPS before you start driving.
Their biggest recommendation: put away your phone while you are driving and use the built in features it has to help you.
Doug Shupe: We’re really encouraging people to use driving focus features on their phones. Those are features that would restrict incoming calls and text messages while a vehicle is in motion.
It’s not only Shupe’s thinking, it’s nationwide statistics.
Doug Shupe: Triple A just did a nationwide survey on these types of driving focus features and found that 81% of drivers are aware that they exist, yet 54% have never used them.
In the middle of the Automotive Clubs event, they’ve hauled in a smashed Toyota Corolla.
Doug Shupe: This car was involved in a crash just this past February. The driver of the vehicle was driving in Buena Park near the 91 and admitted that he looked down a GPS because he was unfamiliar with that area while he was looking down at his phone to see that GPS directions. He ran a red light and T-boned another vehicle. This was an injury crash. So, you know, not everybody dies in these collisions.
You might just get injured, or you might injure someone else, to avoid this put your phone away while driving.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Hayes Flanagan