Texas Drivers: 2nd Annual Distracted Driving Summit Announced

Hey Texas drivers, put down your cell phones and your iPhones, your mp3 players and your GPS devices – the federal government is going to take another look at distracted driving this year.  Last week U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that September 21, 2010 will be the second National Distracted Driving Summit.

Is distracted driving really that big of a problem?  Yes, according to statistics gathered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), that show around 20 percent of all crashes in 2008 involved some type of distraction.  That means that over half a million people were involved in a distracted driving crash, and 6,000 people were killed.  That’s a lot of deaths and injuries in preventable motor vehicle accidents.

Steps taken to reduce distracted driving accidents in the U.S.

Since the first National Distracted Driving Summit last year, there have been a number of steps taken to cut down on the number distracted driving wrecks across the country:

• Distracted driving legislation has been passed in dozens of states, banning or restricting texting while driving and cell phone use while driving
• The federal govn’t banned texting while driving for commercial truck and bus drivers
• The Obama administration issued an Executive Order that banned texting while driving for four million federal employees
• A new government website targeting distraced driving was launched: www.distraction.gov
• The Department of Transportation helped distracted driving accident victims put together a national non-profit called FocusDriven, an organization that advocates for cell-phone free driving

Hopefully the work to eliminate distracted driving as a cause of serious and deadly auto accidents in Texas and around the country will continue successfully.