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

As a New Jersey personal injury lawyer, I have been concerned about the growing use of cell phones while driving by teens, and the tendency to text while behind the wheel. A new Pew survey shows that the problem may be worse then we believe.

The researchers surveyed 800 teens between the ages of 12 and 17 between June and September this year. Seventy four additional teens, who were part of 9 focus groups in New York, Atlanta, Denver and Anna Arbor were also surveyed. While some of the results were not too surprising, the others were extremely worrisome.

The survey suggests that about a quarter of teens aged between 16 and17 years admit to having texted while driving. These statistics were not a shocker,  but what did concern me were the findings that approximately half of the respondents aged between 12 and 17 admitted to having been a passenger in a car with an adult driver texting at the wheel. In fact, these teens frequently saw their parents texting while driving.

Reactions to this behavior were mixed.  While in some cases, teens admitted to being nervous or scared when their parents texted while at the wheel, other teens had grown used to such parental behavior, and thought texting while driving was not a big deal. It’s the second group of teen motorists that I am concerned about. Texting while driving is extremely dangerous, and when a teen sees his or her parent addicted to text messaging while at the wheel, it only helps to develop and foster such reckless behavior in impressionable young motorists.

As a New Jersey car accident lawyer, I believe that parents have as much of a responsibility as schools and law enforcement authorities to develop safe driving practices in children. It’s alarming that so many parents seem to recklessly text at the wheel, unaware or uncaring that their children are observing and learning from them. Parents must step up and contribute to efforts to tackle the texting while driving menace.

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Teenagers remain more at risk for a drunk driving accident than older drivers. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alcohol is linked to at least 24 percent of all accident-related deaths involving a male teen driver. Those may seem like mere statistics, but for New Jersey car accident lawyers who constantly deal with accident victims,  and at least one Hudson County family, those numbers are now all too personal and painful. The Colilla family of Lyndhurst, New Jersey is mourning the death of their 19-year-old daughter who was killed in a drunk driving accident in North Bergen on March 13^th. The driver of the car Tyla was traveling in, has now been charged with death by auto.

Soon after the accident, in which he crashed his car that was carrying two other passengers besides Tyla Colilla, into a support wall, the driver Jesse A. Saquipulla was found to have a blood alcohol level of .12.  The other two passengers, like Saquipulla suffered minor injuries. 

Painful as the Colilla's tragedy is, it's far from unique. While drunk driving accident rates in the rest of the population, have shown a decline in recent years because of better education and greater enforcement, those involving teen drivers have been showing an alarmingly opposing trend. Adding to the problem of teen underage drinking is a host of other factors that seem to compound the problem. For instance, teens are less likely to wear seatbelts than adult drivers, and are also more likely to indulge in other driving behaviors that may mitigate the problem, like listening to loud music, talking with friends in the car, snacking, talking on the cell phone etc. it doesn't help that members of this age group are more likely to indulge in reckless driving, like speeding and tailgating. When you add alcohol use to what is already a combination of risky driving factors, it's easy to understand why there has been such an increase in the number of accidents involving teens.

All is not without hope, however. Studies show that teens whose parents encourage discussions about the dangers of drunk driving at home are less likely to drive under the influence. Also, teens who have been exposed to strong and effective drunk driving awareness campaigns, both in school and outside have a lesser risk of driving drunk. Underage drinking not only destroys the lives and future of these young people, but costs society heavily in lives lost and expensive and long term medical treatment for the severely injured who survive these accidents.

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