I once saw a young man reading an entire book while he was driving. Yes, a whole book.
Today, we are texting, snapchatting, selfie-taking and even shooting full Instagram stories while we drive. Very distracting.
We already have to combat drowsy and drunk drivers.
Now, all of the distracted driving is increasing insurance rates state by state.
According to TIME, some insured drivers are paying double or triple their original insurance premium rates.
You don’t even have to personally be ticketed for texting and driving. But, you’ll be footing the bill.
At some point, we are all paying for the 391,000 drivers injured in 2015 by distracted driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Several states don’t even have a full ban on using handheld devices while driving. Florida is one of those states. As recent as March 2018 a bill was passed to ban texting while driving. As it stands though, it’s still just a secondary offense. So you’d have to be committing a primary offense like speeding in a school zone to be penalized for texting and driving, according to CBS Miami.
Couple this with the fact that many don’t realize reading and replying to a text is not an easy task. Opening a single text involves removing your eyes entirely from the road and your mind fully from the task of driving.
Those 2 to 3 seconds are the difference between living to send another text or dying to read one.
So although you may be responsible when driving, others aren’t. In 2015 alone over 3,477 people were killed because of distracted driving, according to the NHTSA.
To top it off, distracted driving deaths don’t stop in America. Worldwide, more than 3,000 people are killed daily for the same reason, according to ICEBIKE.
That means these numbers put deaths from traffic accidents into the millions annually.
Thinking back, I wonder if the page-turner that young man was reading, would have been worth it if he hadn’t turned another page. Or, if his need to read would have ended someone else’s story.