On Tuesday, December 13 th, the National Transportation Safety Board [NTSB] recommended a total ban on drivers using cell phones except for emergencies. The statistics that have been recorded prove without a doubt that a large percentage of auto accidents, motorcycle accidents, and truck accidents are caused by distracted drivers. The distraction can be cognitively, manually and visually while driving. As a Palm Desert Personal Injury Lawyer handling all categories of motor vehicle accidents I am often at a loss to explain why driver's causing most of the accidents do things like rear-ending cars stopped in broad daylight for a traffic signal. But the explanation is obvious. Driving is no longer the priority. It is now about communication and keeping in touch. My personal injury experience in the Coachella Valley over the last 40 years has given me the opportunity to analyze the causes of auto accidents. Just driving around the desert communities of Palm Springs, Palm Desert and Indio allows me to observe the habits and actions of other drivers. I see drivers eating, drinking, and talking on cell phones when they should be paying attention to the road and other cars. I think that a driver causing an accident because of being distracted while using a cell phone should be penalized to the same extent as drunk drivers. There have been recent scientific studies that demonstrate that texting while driving can be more dangerous than driving while intoxicated. I am not minimizing drunk driving, but at Barry Regar APLC we see the sad consequences of innocent accident victims being victimized by careless drivers who were using cell phones for talking or texting instead of looking at the road ahead. A study published in 2010 in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that smartphone texting significantly contributed to 16,000 Wrongful deaths from auto accidents between 2001 and 2007. A recent tragic auto accident in Missouri that killed two and injured 38 involved a 19-year-old driver that sent or received 11 text messages during the 11 minutes before the accident. The last message occurred immediately prior to the accident. Contact the Palm Springs personal injury lawyer at this firm for an analysis of any injury producing motor vehicle accident. And yes, I favor the banning of non-emergency driver cell phone use for the non-hands free category.
