Texting while driving is one of the biggest causes of car accidents in South Africa. It is also illegal to use your cellphone while driving in South Africa.
But why is it so dangerous? What happens when we text and drive and what are the consequences when we do?
What happens when we text while we drive? 1
Texting while driving is one of the main distractions for people whilst driving. It is one of the leading causes of single vehicle accidents in South Africa. Young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 years are twice as likely to cause a single vehicle accident than adults between the ages of 25 and 49 years.
On average, reading a text and responding whilst you drive can distract you for about 9 seconds. That’s quite a long time to be distracted from the road. South Africa has one of the highest road accident rates in the world and, according to the International Transport Forum’s (ITF) Road Safety Annual Report, 25% of them are as a result of texting and driving.
The ITF’s report in 2017 also revealed that just over 25 deaths per 100,000 people resulted from motor vehicle accidents in 2016. This cost the South African economy R143 billion or 3.5% of the Growth Domestic Product (GDP).
Other distractions that this report attributes to motor vehicle accidents are grooming, drinking and eating.
What are the facts when it comes to texting and driving? 2
- When you text and drive, you are 23 times more likely to cause an accident than if you were driving normally.
- Before an accident happens, if a driver spends 5 seconds looking down at their phone, the distance travelled on a freeway in this time equates to the approximate length of a football field.
- Although 95% of drivers are aware that texting whilst driving is illegal and dangerous, but 21% of them will still do it anyway.
- Younger drivers typically have a higher texting crash rate because of their erratic behaviour behind the wheel whilst texting often swerving in and out of lanes or bumping into other cars.
- 37% of people aged between 18 and 27 admit to texting and driving. 14% of people between the ages 22 and 44 admit to texting whilst driving. While 2% of people between the ages 45 and 60 admit to testing and driving.
What we can do to prevent texting whilst driving?2
The easiest thing we can do is to turn off or mute our phones when driving. This decreases the chances of an accident by 50%. This also helps to resist the urge to text or talk on our phones.
It is important to abide by the law by not using our phones whilst driving and to encourage others to not use their phones when they drive. Don’t become a statistic, a text is not worth the risk.
Set the example by not giving in to the pressures of using your phone. If it is not a life or death situation and someone does try to call or send you a message, they can wait until you get to where you need to be before you can call them back or respond to their message.
It is important to not text while driving. Having car insurance cover for your vehicle is also important.
Sources:
2 https://www.lelandwest.com/texting-while-driving.cfm (US-based insurance company)