A month long effort in Alabama is underway to help you keep your eyes on the road. April is being observed as distracted driving awareness month. Distractions like cell phones and electronic devices have reportedly caused almost ten-thousand crashes in Alabama between 2016 to 2020. Dr. David Brown works with the UA Center for Advanced Public Safety. He says that even glancing at your phone for one text is too much risk.
“That doesn’t seem like much, but in five seconds at highway speeds your vehicle will travel half the length of a football field,” Brown said. “Now think of a child on the 50-yard line running out into the roadway chasing a ball. If you’re looking at your phone, that child doesn’t have a chance.”
Device distractions have caused seventy one deaths, almost six hundred serious injuries, and close to two thousand minor injuries in Alabama over five years. Dr. Brown says that phones and other devices should turned off and moved out of sight while driving.
“If you talk on the phone, you’re going to establish that habit…once you start that habit and you start doing it and you get away with it, you think, ‘Oh, well I did it before I can do it again.’ Sooner or later, it’s going to catch up with you,” Brown contends.
