New Distracted Driving Video Highlights Issue … and Creates Change
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that texting and the use of cellular phones while driving is big news. In fact, as a result of the recent Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) study and the news it garnered, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, held a Distracted Driving Summit in September. In planning the meeting, Secretary LaHood said, “If it were up to me, I would ban drivers from texting, but unfortunately, laws aren’t always enough. We’ve learned from past safety awareness campaigns that it takes a coordinated strategy combining education and enforcement to get results.” Added Secretary LaHood, “The bottom line is … distracted driving is dangerous driving.”
In response to the news the Summit garnered and the attention it brought to this epidemic, DriveCam created a video of distracted driving events – all culled from DriveCam’s database of over 15 million driving events – that has now been seen by every Senator, Congressman, Governor and public official involved in legislating and changing driver behavior.
Take a look at the video so you can truly understand the extent of the problem, and know that DriveCam is making a difference. With real-time video capturing the critical seconds before and after an event, we are the best service to tell people what is really going on in their vehicles (both commercial and consumer).
In 2008, 5,870 people lost their lives and an estimated 515,000 people were injured in crashes in which at least one form of driver distraction occurred. Courtesy of the Naturalist Driving Study conducted by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute for NHTSA, driver involvements in secondary tasks contributed to over 22% of all crashes and near-crashes recorded.
Over 120,000 vehicles are equipped with DriveCam and we’re capturing over 700,000 driving events every month. We see the problem first-hand and we want to help stop it. In fact, we were an active participant in the recent Distracted Driving Summit (mentioned above) and support Bill S. 1536 – Avoiding Life-Endangering and Reckless Texting by Drivers (ALERT Drivers) Act.
The elimination of texting will take a three-fold approach. It needs to be a combination of strong regulation/ legislation, public awareness campaigns about the dangers of texting and a video-based monitoring and coaching tool, such as DriveCam.
We’ve been studying the problem for a dozen years and can provide the technology and services that enable compliance with the new regulations, along with helping drivers become more safety conscious on our roads. DriveCam is committed to working with all government agencies, commercial companies and contractors to assist with their compliance of these new regulations.
