CELL PHONE USE WHILE DRIVING

Cell phone use while driving is a social problem that, despite lots of attempts to reduce it, still is harming a lot of people.

EFFECTS OF TALKING ON A CELL PHONE WHILE DRIVING:

Talking on a cellphone while driving can cause distraction, impairment in judgement, lack of concentration and increases the risk x 4 of being in a car accident.

THE NEGATIVE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY:

Technology has contributed to this problem in negative ways with caller id and call waiting which causes the driver to take their eyes off of the road for a few seconds to look at the phone when ringing.

SOCIAL APPROACH:

Social engineering approaches that have been used to reduce this problem consist of articles, commercials, banning cell phone use while driving and issuing tickets to drivers who are caught talking on their cell phone.

TECHNOLOGY RESOLUTION:

Technology attempted to rectify this problem by inventing the blue tooth, speaker phones and other hands free devices.


THE NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION CELL PHONE RELATED ACCIDENTS STATISTICS:

http://www.drivinglaws.org/stats.php

We will never know exactly how many accidents and deaths have been caused by drivers distracted by their cell-phone conversations, however, we can attempt to draw conclusions from studies that have been done over the past 5 years.
Current studies will target hands-free legislation and should provide more insight into driver distraction issues.

According to the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society cellular phone distractions have caused 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States each year.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has compiled their data and has come up with some very compelling evidence when it comes to cellular phone use while driving.
The NHTSA estimates that your chance of getting in an accident increases by 300% if you're talking on your cellular phone while driving.

In addition their data shows that 25% of all traffic accidents are a result of distracted drivers.
Cellular phone use has gone up by over 600% in the United States .

In 2005 there were approximately 10 million cell phone users in the United States and approximately 50 to 75% of these cellular subscribers have used a cellular phone while driving.
The numbers are staggering; at any given time, there are almost 1 million drivers on the road using a cellular device.