FLORIDA’S CRACKING DOWN ON TEXTING WHILE DRIVING
Distracted driving is a major problem in our country and the State of Florida is no stranger to this issue. Distracted driving is anything that takes your hands off the wheel, your eyes off the road or your mind off of driving. It is extremely risky behavior that puts everyone on the road in danger. Texting requires all of these three types of distraction which makes it the most dangerous of distracted driving behaviors.
The National Safety Council reports that cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year. One out of every four accidents is caused by drivers who are texting while driving and nearly 390,000 injuries occur each year from accidents caused by texting drivers. Answering a text takes away your attention from the road for about 5 seconds. If you’re traveling at 55 miles an hour, that’s enough time to travel the length of a football field.
For a driver to successfully avoid a crash they must perceive a hazard, react to that hazard and give their vehicle time to stop. Driving perception distance, or the distance a vehicle travels from the time a driver sees a hazard until the brain recognizes it, and reaction distance, the distance a car will continue to travel after seeing a hazard until the driver physically hits the brakes, dramatically affects a vehicle’s stopping distance. Going at the mere speed of 30 miles per hour, a driver requires 33 feet of distance to perceive a problem ahead and it takes another 33 feet for that driver to react to the problem, and then 57 feet of braking distance to stop. That is a total of 123 feet for a driver traveling at 30 miles per hour to completely stop without any distracting behavior. So you can imagine the distance needed if someone is texting and then looks up and sees a problem ahead.
Florida however has taken recent steps to protect against texting drivers. Governor DeSantis signed a new law on May 17, 2019, which goes into effect on July 1 allowing police to stop and ticket drivers for texting while they’re behind the wheel of a moving car, with limited exceptions. Drivers will still be able to use their phone while their car is stopped. Texting while driving has been illegal in Florida for years, but police could not stop you for it as a primary offense, because it was treated as a secondary offense and therefore they had to see you committing another offense before they could stop you fot texting. violation
This new law should protect Florida drivers from those distracted drivers who are texting and make our roads safer in the future.
Be safe out there.
Chuck.