New Jersey Accident and Injury Law Blog : New Jersey Injury Lawyer & Attorney : The Grossman Law Firm : Serving Monmouth County, Bergen County

The second Distracted Driving Summit will be held in September this year in Washington DC. 

Last year’s first ever Distracted Driving Summit was followed by major advances in combating the effect of technological distractions behind the wheel. Since that Summit in October, the federal administration has banned texting while driving for commercial bus and truck drivers. There is also a national ban on the use of cell phones while driving for federal government employees. The first Distracted Driving Summit also resulted in a lot of media coverage about the problem of cell phone use and texting while driving, and several states have enacted some sort of legislation to tackle the problem.  Besides, there is now an organization dedicated to lobbying against cell phone use while driving. The group is called Focus Driven, and hopes to do for distracted driving what Mothers against Drunk Driving has done for impaired driving. 

The Department of Transportation is currently involved in funding a crackdown on distracted driving in the state of New York. The agency is investing more than $300,000 in these efforts. The campaign involves education, awareness, flyers and enforcement. If the campaign is found to be successful in reducing cell phone use while driving in Syracuse, it could be extended to other cities in New York State, and even the country.

Considering the great strides that have been made since the first summit, New Jersey personal injury lawyers, and highway safety groups will be hopeful that the second summit to will increase momentum on this issue. As a New Jersey car accident lawyer, I would like to see more and tougher enforcement of our own handheld cell phone and texting bans.

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Almost everyone does it. Listening to a ball-by-ball commentary of the game on the radio while driving-we've all been there. However, a new study conducted by British researchers seems to suggest that listening to sports commentary  can be just as much of an accident risk as drunk driving. 

The British researchers looked at motorists driving just around the World Cup and Wimbledon games. The found that when drivers were listening to sports commentary, their reaction times declined by as much as 20%. To put that in perspective, 20% is the drop in reaction time that's typically seen in an intoxicated driver. What that basically means is that your risk of being involved in an accident when you're engrossed in your sports commentary is as high as if you were driving under the influence.

Obviously, as a New Jersey accident lawyer, I find that very discomfiting. There's no way to translate those results yet to American motorists, but I'm willing to bet that you'd probably find the same kind of results here too. Americans are the ultimate sports lovers, and there is very little that delights us more than multitasking, so listening to sports commentary while we are driving, is something we don't think twice about. 

It's important to remember that when you're engrossed in radio sports commentary, you're much less likely to see other motorists, pedestrians, and bicyclists around you. You're less likely to hear the horns of motorists around you. You're less likely to make emergency driving decisions in time, and your reaction times are likely to get delayed.

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The results of a survey released this week prove not only that distracted driving is still a major problem, but also that these distractions are far more broad ranging than we believe.

The survey was conducted by Jabra, which is a division of GN Netcom, and included over 1,800 respondents from Europe, North America and Asia. Internationally, technological distractions, including those from cell phone and texting devices, continue to be a major problem. There are also other distractions that pull driver attention away from the road, and increase the risk of an accident.

According to the survey,

• ·         72% of the respondents admitted to frequently eating while driving.
• ·         28% frequently text message while driving.
• ·         25% do their hair or even change clothes while driving.
• ·         13 % admitted to applying makeup while driving
• ·         15% of the respondents admitted to having sex while driving
• ·         10% admitted to reading newspapers or magazines while at the wheel

As a New Jersey injury lawyer, I was even more intrigued to see that more than 24% of the respondents are still not using hands-free devices, in spite of laws that allow them to use these devices in places of handheld cell phones.

From the results, it's obvious that motorists continue to remain under the false assumption that driving is an easy task, and can be done while you're on autopilot performing all kinds of activities. It is attitudes like these that lead to accidents. The results of the survey should be a wake-up call also to those, who would like to ban only technological distractions at the wheel. There are all kinds of other distractions that motorists in New Jersey around the country are indulging in, and these are just as dangerous as talking on the cell phone and texting while driving.

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When the law banning the use of hand-held cell phones was passed in New Jersey in 2008, injury lawyers believed that it would dramatically impact the rate of accidents caused by such distracted driving. It turns out that we may not have been as right as we might have hoped. According to the New Jersey Division of Highway Traffic Safety, there are still far too many drivers out there using cell phones while driving and causing accidents.

Since the law went into effect on March 1, 2008, law enforcement officers in New Jersey have issued close to 225,000 citations to motorists for breaking the law. Between 2008 and 2009, there were 3,610 accidents that involved a motorist using a hand-held cell phone. These crashes led to a total of 13 deaths. The number of deaths from cell phone-related accidents seem to be the highest in Camden County with 231 accidents in all related to motorists using cell phones while driving. Burlington County was next with 121 accidents, and Gloucester County was third with 116 accidents traced to the use of hand-held cell phones at the wheel.

According to Division of Highway Traffic Safety chief Pam Fischer, law-enforcement officers are doing their duty, going out there and cracking down hard on motorists who use cell phones while driving. Unfortunately, the number of motorists who break the ban seemed to be far too many for law enforcement to be able to reach them all.

So do I think the laws have failed? No. We simply need better enforcement, heavier fines, and stricter penalties for these laws to work the way they were supposed to.

In related distracted driving news, a new bill proposes that police responding to an accident note down whether the motorist was distracted at the time of the accident. Officers would be given a sheet with a number of distractions - eating, changing radio stations and other distractions - and would have to check on the appropriate one.

Scott Grossman is a New Jersey injury lawyer, representing injured victims of motor vehicle accidents and car crashes in Monmouth, Bergen, Passaic, and Ocean Counties, and across the state of New Jersey.

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As the numbers of digitized billboards on our highways has increased, the calls for limiting the use of these billboards because of the distraction risks have also become louder.

Travelers have become used to these billboards that flash advertising messages, news headlines, and sports scores. But exactly how distracting are these billboards? 

The billboard industry insists that there is no evidence to show that these billboards are any more distracting than traditional billboards. However, auto safety advocates are not as convinced. Adding to the confusion is that there have been very few studies into the distraction risks of these billboards compared to conventional ones.  Last year a Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study indicated that these billboards were an accident risk, but did not confirm just how high the risk was. The Virginia Tech study did say, however, that there was a need for more studies into these risks.

It seems to me that anything that can take a motorist’s attention away from the road on a busy highway for enough time to cause an accident, must be considered a serious risk. Some of these billboards change messages every 6 to 8 seconds. These are highly distracting messages that have the potential to cause motorists to take their eyes off the road for several seconds at a time. Motorists who are distracted by billboards are already talking on their cell phones or texting while driving. In short, these motorists can't handle any more distractions.

Efforts to ban these billboards are on, but the industry has been stubborn about its opposition to any such ban. In several states, nonprofit groups are trying to block the installation of more such billboards.

Scott Grossman is a New Jersey personal injury lawyer representing injured victims of auto accidents in Monmouth, Bergen, Passaic and Ocean counties, and across the state of New Jersey.

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A new group that aims to act as Mothers Against Drunk Driving does to support families of DUI crash victims, has just been launched in Washington. FocusDriven is meant to support families of persons killed in auto accidents involving a distracted driver. It’s part of the nationwide campaign against distracted driving, and it aims to a give a voice to victims of such crashes, who have not had enough attention paid to them till now.

The launch of the group was accompanied by new statistics by the National Safety Council that indicates that 28 percent of all accidents involve motorists distracted by their cell phones. Approximately 1.3 million accidents are caused by persons having a conversation on their cell phone behind the wheel, while 200,000 accidents are caused by text messaging drivers. Every year, these accidents kill more than 2,500 people.  It’s the families of these victims that FocusDriven will give a voice to.

The group also plans to pressurize states that have failed to take the texting and talking on the cell phone issues, seriously enough. Several states this year are dealing with legislations relating to bans on text messaging and the use of handheld cell phones. They might face additional pressure from groups like FocusDriven when the time comes for a vote.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving has expanded from being a victims support advocacy group to an influential voice for stronger laws against drunk driving, ignition interlock devices and other DUI issues.  I hope FocusDriven can make the same contribution in the fight against distracted driving.  Most importantly, the organization will be able to act as a mouthpiece for the silent victims of distracted driving crashes, allowing them to speak out strongly against inattentive driving. 

Scott Grossman is a Monmouth County auto accident lawyer, representing injured victims of auto accidents in Freehold, Marlboro, Aberdeen, Howell, and across Monmouth County.

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