Bloomerg said:Amid a historic spike in U.S. traffic fatalities, federal data on the danger of distracted driving are getting worse.
Jennifer Smith doesnt like the term accident. It implies too much chance and too little culpability.
A crash killed her mother in 2008, she insists, when her car was broadsided by another vehicle while on her way to pick up cat food. The other driver, a 20-year-old college student, ran a red light while talking on his mobile phone, a distraction that he immediately admitted and cited as the catalyst of the fatal event.
Yet in federal records, the death isnt attributed to distraction or mobile-phone use. Its just another line item on the grim annual toll taken by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration [NHTSA]one of 37,262 that year. Three months later, Smith quit her job as a realtor and formed Stopdistractions.org, a nonprofit lobbying and support group. Her intent was to make the tragic loss of her mother an anomaly.
Over the past two years, after decades of declining deaths on the road, U.S. traffic fatalities surged by 14.4 percent.
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Regulators, meanwhile, still have no good idea why crash-related deaths are spiking: People are driving longer distances but not tremendously so; total miles were up just 2.2 percent last year. Collectively, we seemed to be speeding and drinking a little more, but not much more than usual. Together, experts say these upticks dont explain the surge in road deaths.
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There are however three big clues, and they dont rest along the highway. One, as you may have guessed, is the substantial increase in smartphone use by U.S. drivers as they drive.
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The second is the changing way in which Americans use their phones while they drive. These days, were pretty much done talking. Texting, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are the order of the dayall activities that require far more attention than simply holding a gadget to your ear or responding to a disembodied voice
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Finally, the increase in fatalities has been largely among bicyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestriansall of whom are easier to miss from the drivers seat than, say, a 4,000-pound SUVespecially if youre glancing up from your phone rather than concentrating on the road.
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