Wednesday
May192010
Texting And Driving, A Global Crisis
Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 3:35PM
Nearly 6,000 people died in 2008 in the US alone because of distracted drivers, and nearly half a million were injured, says US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
LaHood was at the UN with Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin to launch an international safety initiatives to get drivers off their cell phones.
The US transportation Secretary believes distracted driving is the least recognized public health and safety crisis of the 21st century, causing over 80% of all road accidents. The World Health Organization projects road accidents to be the fifth highest cause of fatalities world wide by 2030 , ahead of HIV AIDS and malaria.
"Distracted driving has evolved from a dangerous practice to a deadly epidemic. In the US, it is an epidemic because everyone has a cell phone or a mobile device and everyone thinks they can use and drive safely.We have learned they simply can't do this. Tragedy after tragedy affirms this fact." said LaHood, "If you're looking down at a Blackberry, texting a message for 4 seconds, your car goes the length of a football field without you paying attention"
Secretary General Ban Ki Moon also took the opportunity to announce a new measure that would prohibit drivers of UN vehicles from texting while driving.LaHood said this was an important step forwards and compared the initiative to previous US safety campaigns that were also viewed with skepticism at the time.
"Ten years ago people said you cant get people to buckle up.So we started a program called Click it or Ticket. Now 85 percent of people who get in a car buckle their seat belt. We are right at the place were America was with .08 and drunk driving. People said you will never get drunk drivers off the road and now people take seriously the idea that if your blood alcahol is above .08, your going to be arrested and lose your driving priviliges"
LaHood was at the UN with Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin to launch an international safety initiatives to get drivers off their cell phones.
The US transportation Secretary believes distracted driving is the least recognized public health and safety crisis of the 21st century, causing over 80% of all road accidents. The World Health Organization projects road accidents to be the fifth highest cause of fatalities world wide by 2030 , ahead of HIV AIDS and malaria.
"Distracted driving has evolved from a dangerous practice to a deadly epidemic. In the US, it is an epidemic because everyone has a cell phone or a mobile device and everyone thinks they can use and drive safely.We have learned they simply can't do this. Tragedy after tragedy affirms this fact." said LaHood, "If you're looking down at a Blackberry, texting a message for 4 seconds, your car goes the length of a football field without you paying attention"
Secretary General Ban Ki Moon also took the opportunity to announce a new measure that would prohibit drivers of UN vehicles from texting while driving.LaHood said this was an important step forwards and compared the initiative to previous US safety campaigns that were also viewed with skepticism at the time.
"Ten years ago people said you cant get people to buckle up.So we started a program called Click it or Ticket. Now 85 percent of people who get in a car buckle their seat belt. We are right at the place were America was with .08 and drunk driving. People said you will never get drunk drivers off the road and now people take seriously the idea that if your blood alcahol is above .08, your going to be arrested and lose your driving priviliges"
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