Texting

What so dangerous about texting while driving?

Blindness!

Let’s start by sending someone a text and time how long it takes. Just something short like “On my way” or “Almost there”.  Now I’m not the world’s fastest (or slowest) at texting but it took me 20 seconds from picking the phone up, opening the messaging system, finding my wife’s number, typing the message, pressing send, then turning the phone off and putting it down. Let me know below how long it took you!

Now some maths :( for every 20kph you travel you are going 5.55m per second, so at 60kph that’s 16.65m per second. If it takes you just 20 seconds to send that text you are travelling over 330 meters without paying proper attention to the road.

Sure, I hear you, you only type one word at a time and then check the road, a quick test shows I can actually type out one word “Almost” in 3 seconds, which would be 50m with my eyes on my phone and not on the road. What can happen in 50m?

Your car can drift off in to a tree, the car in front could apply the brake, another car could drift into your lane, a child could run out into the road! A lot can happen on the road, and when it does, it happens fast! Your best chance of avoiding a crash when stuff happens is seeing it before it happens. Observation!

The seriousness doesn’t end there, if you don’t see it coming you won’t react to it! That means what could have been a 10kph collision is now a 60kph collision, you’ll hit whatever it is at FULL SPEED.

Some simple rounded calculations for you to consider:

Having problems with this yourself? Why not join the governments Distraction Action Plan!