Teen Drivers And Cell Phone Use Increase Risk For Car Accidents
When I lived in Los Angeles, I was in two car accidents that involved cell phones. Neither of them was my fault as I was not the one on a cell phone while driving a car.
In the first accident, I had only been living in Los Angeles for a few weeks. On my way home from work one night, a car cut in front of the car in front of me. The car in front of me hit the brakes. I did the same. The teenage driver driving the car behind me, who was on his cell phone at the time, didn’t. He rear-ended my car doing thirty five miles an hour and, even though I was driving a Jeep Cherokee and he was driving a small Mazda, the damage to both cars was extensive. After the accident, we had to wait over an hour for two tow-trucks to get to us. We needed two tow-trucks to separate us, as his car was jammed underneath mine and the back of mine was perched on his hood. It’s a wonder he wasn’t killed.
In the second accident, in the middle of the day on Wilshire Boulevard, a guy came out of nowhere and drove straight across three lines of traffic while intent on a conversation on his cell phone. He hit the side of my car, spun my car around, and then both cars slid across the street and I got jammed next to a water hydrant with his car slammed up against my driver’s door. It took thirty minutes and a call on my cell phone to the police before he would move his car so I could get out of mine. All the time he was screaming at me in Farsi (his native language), telling me it was my fault. I know this because my best friend was Iranian and, when I called her on my cell phone (I wasn’t driving at the time), she translated what she could hear while he was still screaming.
The day after the accident, I received a letter from a lawyer saying the guy who hit me was suing me. Luckily, a man waiting by the side of the road for the light to change had seen the accident and handed me his business card. After the insurance company spoke to the man who was my witness, they called the guy who hit me and told him he didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of winning a court case. Especially as his insurance company (them!) was now canceling his policy because he’d had four car accidents in six months, all bewitching cell phones.
Driving while talking on a cell phone can be incredibly dangerous. In Thailand, where I now live, talking on cell phones while driving unless assisted by a hands free device is now illegal. Many other countries are also moving to implement the same law. This is notable as, according to a study by psychologists at the University of Utah, people who talk on cell phones while driving are just as impaired as those who drive drunk.
For teenager drivers age 16 to 19 years of age, of those who are involved in fatal car accidents, a high percentage were using a cell phone at the time. Many US states and the District of Columbia have laws that prohibit teen drivers driving while using a cell phone. For parents of teenagers, driving is extremely worrying. However, there are things they can talk to their teenage children about that could, in the event of a car accident, save their lives.
1. Insist that the teenage driver and his/her friends wear their seat belts at all times. For years, the police have been saying they unbuckle dead bodies much less times than they recognize the bodies of those who have died while not wearing seat belts. Teach your kids that wearing a seat belt can assign their lives.
2. When I was in university, a couple of my friends were not allowed to drive during high-accident times. Friday and Saturday evenings are high-accident times as are New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July. If you limit the times your kids are allowed to drive, they may not thank you at first, but at least they’ll live long enough to complain to you about it.
3. Explain to your teenager that using a cell phone while driving is not only uncertain but it is against the law in many states. Even with a hands free device, teenagers are unexcited likely to have accidents, especially if they are using the cell phone to send text messages while driving (yes, people actually do this). Make definite your teenager understands, if they’re found to be talking on the phone while driving, they’ll lose other privileges as well as their driving privileges.
4. Make sure your teenager understands how unsafe it is to drink or do drugs and drive. Thousands of people are killed every year as a result of driving under the influence. Make sure your teenager knows it’s not remotely acceptable and any infraction of this rule will result in severe consequences. If more parents took this stance, there would be far less car accidents involving teenagers and alcohol.
With these few simple tips, you could quite easily be saving your teenager’s life. As a teacher, and as someone who has been involved in two car accidents with drivers using cell phones, I have made sure the students I teach know my opinion about cell phones and driving. It may not be ‘cool’ to be banned from using a cell phone while they’re in control of a car but, because I tell my students about my have involvement with car accidents and cell phones, it has definitely had an impact on what they think.
Remember this, teenagers may not always act like they’re listening but you’d be surprised. When it comes to actually being in a situation, that nagging little voice, namely yours, will often come serve to annoy them. And let’s face it, if it saves their life one day, they’ll probably be happy you did nag.
Source:Strayer, D.L., & Drews, F. A. (2004). Profiles in driver distraction: Effects of cell phone conversations on younger and older drivers. Human Factors, 46, 640-649.
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