The Tragic Distraction of Distracted Driving

When you drove down the road at 55 mph with your eyes on your cellphone sending a text message, your car traveled the length of a football field.

You essentially drove blindfolded for 100 yards.

You were a distracted driver.

April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month, a time to put the spotlight on something that claims 3,000 lives or more a year in the U.S. Nine people are killed every day in distracted driving crashes, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Hundreds of thousands are injured annually.

At Lehigh Valley Health Network, we see distracted driving accident victims come through the emergency room doors of our hospitals across the region.

Trauma surgeon Katy Wheel, MD, with Lehigh Valley Institute for Surgical Excellence, says vehicle crashes can be devastating. “We see young people with serious brain injuries, college students who will never go back to school. We see other patients who die or have significant orthopedic, chest or abdominal injuries,” Dr. Wheel says. “It can change your life completely.”

Dr. Wheel says vehicle safety and hands-free driving improvements should not give a false sense of security. “Distracted driving still takes your attention away and you’re not focused on what you should be doing,” she says.

While phones can be a prime distraction for drivers, anything that takes your eyes or your attention off the road can distract you from your main job as a driver: driving safely with your eyes on the road and on what’s around you. Distractions also can include eating and drinking, talking to people in your vehicle, fiddling with the stereo, entertainment or navigation system, and more.

It can be applying makeup, fixing your hair or rubbernecking at a construction worksite or an accident scene. It can be reaching for something that fell off the seat or simply daydreaming.

The website autoinsurance.com says a study it conducted shows a quarter of drivers admit to regularly texting and driving. It also says 53% of drivers have knowingly broken cellphone laws while driving, and one in three American drivers don’t even know their state’s rules regarding cellphone use behind the wheel.

The CDC says driving distractions fall into three main buckets:

Visual: Taking your eyes off the wheel
Manual: Taking your hands off the wheel
Cognitive: Taking your mind off driving

No place is immune from distracted driving crashes. Newspapers and newscasts carry tragic stories of crashes involving distracted drivers. They tell of lives lost and altered, of families forever changed.

And of all that comes from these tragedies; they can’t turn back time.

One local story involves Jacy Good, a young woman who nearly lost her life on her graduation day from Muhlenberg College in Allentown on May 18, 2008.

After graduation, the car carrying 21-year-old Jacy and her parents home to Lancaster County that day was hit head-on by a tractor trailer in Berks County as both entered an intersection with green lights.

The crash happened when the truck swerved to avoid a minivan that tried to turn left through a red light. That 18-year-old minivan driver was talking on his phone at the time.

Jacy’s parents were killed. Jacy was given a 10% chance at surviving, but beat the odds.

She is partially paralyzed and can’t use her left arm or lower leg and has minor lingering cognitive issues. But she’s on a mission to save others. With her husband, fellow Muhlenberg graduate Steve Johnson, she started Hang Up and Drive in 2011. They’ve spread their message at nearly 1,600 events in nearly all 50 states, as well as three countries. Watch Jacy’s powerful video.

AT&T’s It Can Wait page, referenced on Jacy and Steve’s site, also has a wealth of information on how to help reduce distracted driving.

Sometimes, even surviving a distracted driving crash doesn’t prevent another. Such was the case for California teen Amanda Clark. In March 2006, she was on her phone, trying to get directions in an unfamiliar area, when she ran a stop sign. Her sport utility vehicle was hit and rolled three times. She escaped major injury.

“I thought this would be a wake-up call for her. It was, for a short period of time,” Clark’s mother, Bonnye Spray, says in an ImpactTeenDrivers YouTube video. After that, Amanda put down her phone when she drove and was more cautious, but it didn’t last. In her diary, Amanda wrote she had learned not to take life for granted, that it could end in the blink of an eye. It proved tragically prophetic.

A year after the first crash, Amanda was on her phone when her car went over an embankment. She was pinned inside for 40 minutes. Cellphone records showed she was texting. She died the next day. She was 19.

“I want to tell her story. I need for everybody to hear it,” Spray says. “One thing I tell teenagers is if you get in that car, think of Amanda.”

At Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN), we’re constantly working to educate drivers on the dangers of distracted driving and driving impaired. Each year, we visit dozens of schools with our distracted/impaired driving simulators.

We’ve reached more than 71,000 students since the program began 12 years ago.

“I’m there to try to prevent them from becoming a trauma patient,” says Bill McQuilken, a trauma prevention coordinator with LVHN, of the program he helped develop. “I tell them there are consequences to driving distracted or impaired.”

Pennsylvania state police and a local county judge, as well as LVHN’s MedEvac helicopter, are featured in LVHN’s simulator videos to make them more relatable and realistic. “They [students] are very surprised at what can happen,” McQuilken says. “It can get very emotional for them.”

McQuilken doesn’t sugarcoat the dangers of distracted or impaired driving. He warns of possible injuries and deaths, lawsuits and jail time. “The message is simple. Distracted or impaired driving can kill you or others,” McQuilken says. “We’re working hard to prevent this unnecessary suffering.”

The program isn’t just simulators. McQuilken joins with community partners, including the Center for Humanistic Change, Northampton County Highway Safety Program and the Highway Safety Network, to deliver a comprehensive program and message.

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, state law prohibits as a primary offense any driver from using an interactive wireless communication device (IWCD) to send, read or write a text-based communication while his or her vehicle is in motion. A primary offense means a police officer can make a traffic stop based on that violation alone.

Pennsylvania law defines an IWCD as a wireless phone, personal digital assistant, smartphone, portable or mobile computer or similar devices that can be used for texting, instant messaging, emailing or browsing the internet. A text-based communication is a text message, instant message, email or other written communication composed or received on an IWCD.

The texting ban doesn’t include the use of a GPS device, a system or device that is physically or electronically integrated into the vehicle, or a communications device that is affixed to a mass transit vehicle, bus or school bus.