DOT To Hold Distracted Driving Summit

Hello All,

As I mentioned the other day, I was driving to Boston to check out housing for my graduate school bound daughter, when we witnessed a near rear end collision in the lane right next to us while stopped at a traffic light. Both of the drivers were using hand held phones and when we looked around at the other cars around us, several drivers were talking on hand held devices, one was texting and several others were either using blue tooth or singing along to the radio (hard to tell these days). The point is that we felt like we were the only ones paying attention.

This is becoming a national problem as evidenced by U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's announcement that the second National Distracted Driving Summit will be held on September 21, 2010, in Washington, DC. To build on the growing momentum sparked by the first summit last fall, Secretary LaHood will convene leading transportation officials, safety advocates, law enforcement, industry representatives, researchers, and victims affected by distraction-related crashes to address challenges and identify opportunities for national anti-distracted driving efforts.
.
“Working together, we can put an end to the thousands of needless deaths and injuries caused by distracted driving each year,” said Secretary LaHood. “By getting the best minds together, I believe we can figure out how to get people to put down their phones and pay attention to the road.”
.
In the year since Secretary LaHood convened the first Distracted Driving Summit, efforts to curb distracted driving have grown exponentially. Dozens of state and local governments have enacted anti-distracted driving legislation and the federal government has established texting bans for commercial truck and bus drivers. The Department of Transportation helped victims establish a national non-profit advocacy organization called FocusDriven and launched pilot law enforcement campaigns in Hartford, CT and Syracuse, NY.
.
Research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows that in 2008, nearly 6,000 people died and more than half a million were injured in crashes involving a distracted driver. More than 20 percent of all crashes that same year involved some type of distraction.

Stay Focused & Drive Safely.......HK