Texting while driving is never safe under any circumstances, but a woman was arrested in Southern California after taking the practice of texting and driving to ridiculous extremes. The woman was texting as she drove on the freeway with her one year old baby in her lap. If this does not sound bad enough, she also had a four-year-old in the back seat who was not wearing a seatbelt. The woman was charged with child endangerment and has a history of similar past violations for not securing her child in a car seat and not wearing a seatbelt.
While this is a rather extreme case, it highlights two common but unacceptable practices, texting while driving and failure to use safety restraints that cause serious injuries and even wrongful death. A few statistics provide some alarming facts about the dangers of texting messaging while driving:
- Nearly forty percent of drivers admit texting while driving
- Almost twenty percent of drivers concede they routinely text and drive
- Teen drivers who are texting spend ten percent of their time in the wrong lane
- Responding to a text message results in diverting one’s eyes from the road for five seconds
- A vehicle moving at freeway speeds can travel the length of a football field in five seconds
- Studies show that drivers engaged in text messaging have response time similar to drunk drivers
There are three types of driver distraction: visual distractions, manual distractions and mental distractions. Text messaging poses a distraction risk at all three levels of distraction. A visual distraction involves activities that cause a driver to avert one’s eyes from the road. A driver who reads a text message or looks at the keyboard to compose or send a text message must avert one’s eyes from the roadway. Even when a driver is not busy trying to hold both a baby and a cell phone, texting on a mobile phone, iPod or other portable electronic device requires physically holding the phone and manipulation of the keys. Regardless of whether you are reading a text, sending a message or composing a message, your mind also is distracted.
The other troubling aspect of this case is that the woman had the baby in her lap rather than a child safety restraint. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that a properly used child safety restraint system (i.e. car seat) reduces the child fatality rate in car accidents by more than seventy percent. Child safety restraints prevent vehicle ejections, which are a leading cause of fatalities in car accidents. Car seats also keep children from being thrown against the dashboard or other hard surfaces in the vehicle where they may suffer head injuries, spinal cord injuries and other catastrophic injuries. Child safety seats also are tailored to the unique anatomy of children. Car seats restrain a child while dispersing the force of impact to less vulnerable areas of a child’s body.
Motor vehicle accidents remain the leading cause of death for children ages 3-14 according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Every day across the country, there are four children in this age range who die in car accidents and almost 530 more that are injured. When parents drive the roads of Mississippi with their children in their car, they should exercise caution, pay attention, and require children to wear seatbelts and car seats. If your child has been injured in a car accident, our experienced Mississippi car accident lawyers at Barrett Law may be able to help you obtain the compensation your child needs to promote the fastest, fullest recovery. At the Barrett Law Offices PLLC, our experienced Mississippi personal injury lawyers represent injury victims throughout Mississippi. Our law firm has roots that reach back 75 years so contact us today for your free initial consultation at (662) 834-2376 to see how we can help.