Jury Awards $664,000.00 To Victim of Texting-And-Driving Crash

Jury takes just one hour to award $664,000.00 to victim of texting-while-driving crash.

Oprah and Distracted Driving : Right On!

Distracted Driving Kills, So says Oprah

Distracted Driving: USDOT Joins the Party.

Texting while driving kills and maims. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration is launching new efforts to eliminate distracted driving.

Distracted Driving Illegal?

Clark and Steinhorn have been chronicling the march towards a nationwide texting while driving ban. Here is the latest.

Wear Seatbelts, Don't Drink and Drive, Don't Smoke: Does Behavioral Modification Work?

Car and Truck Crashes Resulting from Driving While Testing, Drinking and Using Cell Phones; Have Resulted in Calls for Modifying Driver's Behavior. Does this work?

Independent Truckers Advocate Texting Ban

It's contagious! Not H1N1 but the widespread recognition that texting while driving is unduly dangerous. The Owner-Operator Independent Truckers Association, 158,000 truckers strong nationwide, have endorsed not only a texting while driving ban but also a greater governmental emphasis on safe-driving in proximity to commercial trucks, eighteen wheelers and semi-trucks.

As has been discussed extensively here in the past, professional truck drivers are the nation's safest drivers per mile driven. Unfortunately, when they are involved in crashes with cars, motorcycles and other smaller vehicles, the destruction, personal injury and wrongful death are considerable.

The OOIDA headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri has been in operation for 36 years and emphasizes not only safe driving by its members but also by the overall motoring public when in proximity to big rigs.

America's Loves Driving and Cell Phones: Bad Mix

The damage estimates are staggering, 2,600 deaths, 342,000 injuries and 42 billion dollars in economic losses, all attributable to distracted driving. These numbers compiled by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis seem almost inconceivable.

270 million cell phones and 136 million cars don't mix well. The consensus from this last weeks convocation in Washington is that enforcement is the key. Analogizing texting while driving to drinking and driving, it seems that the only effective deterrent is to penalize non-compliant motorists.

The problem is that states, including Maryland and Virginia, have passed such watered-down laws that enforcement will be very difficult. Quite simply, Marylanders are allowed to read text and phone messages and enter numbers into their phones while driving. Obviously, it would be difficult for charging officers to distinguish which drivers are illegally texting and which are legally studying their phones in equally dangerous behavior.

In Virginia officers can only ticket phone abusers as a secondary violation, meaning that they can only pull over a driver for other illegal driving behavior first and ticket cell phone misuse second.

It seems clear that injuries and wrongful deaths will continue to pile up in Maryland, Virginia and elsewhere until laws and their enforcement are made more effective. http://www.maryland-law.com/blog/reducing-car-and-truck-crashes-through-distracted-driving-reduction.cfm

Listen to the President: No Texting While Driving

At Clark and Steinhorn we have long suspected that President Obama is a regular reader of our blogs. Further evidence came to light in today's Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/01/AR2009100103447.html

The president has banned government employees from texting while driving government vehicles, using government provided phones or while on government business.

There are a lot of government employees so if this executive order is followed this could have a big impact.

It is estimated that more than 812,000 drivers are on the roads during daytime using cell phones. This works out to be 11% of all drivers actively driving while distracted. Harvard's center for risk analysis estimates that 6% of all crashes result from cellphone use. That is 342,000 injuries and 2,600 wrongful deaths.

So listen to us http://www.maryland-law.com/blog/reducing-car-and-truck-crashes-through-distracted-driving-reduction.cfm  and the president.

Banning texting

Car Crashes and Texting: Even Virginia Has Taken Notice

Wow! We have been extolling the District of Columbia distracted driving laws on our website for some time  http://www.maryland-law.com/blog/226.cfm     and with Maryland's new anti-texting law taking effect, I guess it was inevitable Virginia would eventually take notice.

The Washington Post reports that Virginia officials in conjunction with AAA are holding events to stress the danger of cell phone use while driving. A particular theme is the danger of texting in construction zones on the beltway.

AAA officials assert that 50% or more of beltway drivers are from time to time distracted by their cell phones. Unless the public can be weaned from this addiction to inattention while driving more car crash deaths and injuries are inevitable.

New Texting Laws to Take Effect This Week

Maryland joins the states which have outlawed texting while driving, effective October 1st, 2009.  http://www.maryland-law.com/blog/226.cfm  To be technically accurate Maryland vehicle operators are forbidden to send or write text messages while operating a motor vehicle on a public roadway. There is an exception for 911 messages.

The maximum penalty is a $500.00 fine.
 
While the program or its equivalent has been said to be highly successful in Orange County, Califonia, civil libertarians question some aspects of the new law.

Specifically, drivers are still permitted to use their cellphones to see incoming texts and to play games. The obvious question of course is if the police pull a driver over for texting while driving, how will they prove it?

We will see but it could be a source of considerable controversy

Distracted Driving More Prevalent Near Schools

There is a tendency to think of distracted driving as being associated with cellphones and communications devices in general. A new study shows that this is true but does not show the full array of distractions which go on near our schools.

Eating on-the-go breakfasts, grooming, smoking and even last minute studying efforts, contribute to inattention in school zones where maximum care are mandated by law.

Some of the findings seem a bit counter-intuitive. Females are statistically more distracted than males, after school is worse than before and those who aren't using safety belts are more subject to problems.

As has been discussed here at length, drivers using cellphones are four times  more likely to be in involved in accidents than those who are not. Much of the present cognitive research suggests that the distractability of cellphone employing drivers is comparable to or worse than drunk drivers.

So keep yourself and those around you safer pay attention in school zones and pull over to use your cellphone.
For more information: http://www.nsc.org/resources/issues/factsheet.aspx

Cell Phones and Car Crashes: An Unhappy Marriage

We've discussed it here before, using your cellphone while driving is just plain dangerous. The District has been out front of jurisdictions in implementing safety laws designed to reduce car accidents attributable to inattention from cellphone use. http://www.maryland-law.com/blog/226.cfm

Some of the lateest findings reinforce this necessity the more. It is suggested that you are four times more likely to be in a car crash if you are driving while using your cellphone.  http://www.abc22.com/Global/story.asp?S=11150817

Why is this? It has been suggested that this stems from a phenomenon known as perceptual blindness. The basic idea is that focusing one's attention on a conversation while driving detracts from your ability to observe potential dangers that are there to be seen.

In an era where multi-tasking is the norm, we relegate one of the most deadly activities, driving, to a secondary function when we are concentrating on using a phone. Obviously, this is compounded when we take our eyes off the road to see who is calling us (Should I answer?), to dial numbers or worst of all to text.

When we at Clark and Steinhorn litigate car and truck crash injury cases, we routinely ask for cellphone billing records to see if the negligent party who caused the accident was on the phone.

So do yourself and the motoring public a favor, pull over if you have to use your phone, you might just save yourself from a bad accident.

Federal Agency to Conduct Summit On The Dangers of Texting While Driving

Well its about time.  The New York Times reports in its August 5, 2009 edition that the Department of Transportation will hold a summit this September on the dangers of distracted drivers and drivers who text and drive.  Safety advocates say this is a shift in the federal government's recognition of the dangers of drivers who text while driving and who are negligently causing more and more car, bus and truck accidents, many with serious injuries.

Several states, including Maryland and Virginia, have enacted anti-texting laws to prevent accidents caused by negligent drivers who text and drive, and the movement is growing.  With the rise in car and truck accidents caused by drivers who text, federal action to make our roads safer is gaining more and more momentum.

Our office has seen the victims of negligent drivers who text while driving, and we welcome these efforts to make our roads more safe.  If you have been the victim of a negligent driver who was texting while driving, call the Law Offices of Clark & Steinhorn, LLC.

The Dangers of Texting While Driving

Texting While Driving

Technology is a wonderful thing but often brings unforseen consequences. We see this every day in our practice with the ever-increasing number of major collisions resulting from driver's texting while driving. Recently new laws were enacted in Virginia and Maryland prohibiting texting while driving. The District of Columbia enacted the Distacted Driving Safety Act back in 2004 and yet just yesterday I was contacted by a driver who was in a major collision at Ward Circle, struck from behind by a texting driver. The Metropolitan Police came to the scene and yet despite the driver's admission that she was texting no citation was issued.

The texting problem also carries over to more dangerous situations as a Metro train operator was recently suspended for texting while operating his train. The evidence of his inattention was caught on video and this obviously begs the question of how widespread this practice is? In California a train operator was found to have been texting while a deadly accident was unfolding before him. How can this dangerous practice be stopped?

The American Automobile Association has suggested that soon laws will be on the books in every state prohibiting texting while driving and yet laws are meaningless unless they are enforced. Which brings me back to my unfortunate new client from the Ward Circle collision. He is hurt ,will miss time from work and will have the general hassle of coercing a reluctant insurance company into fixing his car. While the texting driver who caused the accident may ultimately get a bump-up in her insurance rates, she did not get as much as a ticket for her dangerous actions. Lets be honest-if you are driving a two-ton machine with your eyes looking down at a two inch screen, you may as well be driving with your eyes closed.

Reducing Distracted Driver Involvement in Deadly Car Crashes: A Symposium

As concerns spread about distracted driving, two organizations are championing reform. The American Automobile Association and the National Safety Council are leading the charge.

The N.S.C. held a symposium last October the fruits of which are available at their website : http://www.nsc.org/resources/issues/DD_symposium.aspx

The many avenues explored included legislative solutions, educational efforts, technological improvements and employer policies designed to discourage workday driving and cell phoning.

Much time was also devoted to the neuroscience behind why cell phone use while driving is so hazardous.

Even merely listening to cell phone chatter substantially degrades one's ability to pay heed to one's driving.

Neuro-scientists from the Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh have performed studies involving brain imaging and virtual reality and demonstrated unequivocally that danger lurks in driving cellphone use.

The materials employed at the symposium are available on the website and are well worth reading.