Hello everyone it’s Barry from Barry’s Auto Body and Auto Collision Repair. Today we’re covering a serious topic that affects everyone on the road. Texting while driving is a concerning and potentially dangerous habit that is growing rapidly in our society. Overuse of phones has been linked with stress, anxiety, and sleep disorders. The average person now spends almost 3 hours a day just on their phones. If you combine the data for phones and tablets, you’ll find that people spend over 4 and a half hours per day. This is especially concerning for teenagers and younger children. Studies show that spending more than 5 hours with a screen greatly reduces a child’s chance of sleeping for more than 7 hours, and we know how important sleep can be in a child’s life.
Using a cell phone while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year and accounts for 25 percent of all auto collisions. Texting and driving is actually considered more dangerous than drunk driving by some experts and causes nearly 400,000 injuries each year. Driving can be a stressful and difficult task for young teens. With the added urge to stare at a phone, teens become four times more likely to get in an auto collision than adults. This number increases if there is more than one person in the car.
It is our job to fix your cars after an auto collision and we are extremely concerned about the number of collisions that are results of a texting and driving scenario. Apple and Android have been gathering phone usage data and allowing users to view it on a daily and weekly basis. We encourage all drivers to keep their phones out of reach on the road. That text, call, email or social media notification can wait…lives are at risk!