Distracted driving has become and remains one of the major causes of deadly accidents these days. It comes in diverse forms more than we could even fully enumerate. The human mind wonders a lot and attention is easily drifted away from the road while driving. This might be because driving only does a little to engage the mind and it’s quite a common thing to feel that taking your attention away for a brief moment would not harm. Well, here are a few distractions that could have fatal consequences. A driving program like the Driving lessons Dublin would do a lot to minimize potentials of accidents on the road
Texting while driving
This alone has claimed millions of lives and caused millions if not billions of injuries. According to a report by NHTSA and the zebra’s internal report, over a million car crashes that occurred in the US in the year 2018 were caused by texting while driving. 14 percent of the total fatal accidents that occurred in 2018 were caused by texting while driving. Over 129 billion or 15 percent of the overall societal damages were caused by texting while driving.
These statistics show the vulnerability to accidents, texting while driving. Your phone might be tempting; it is always advisable to resist the urge and focus mainly on what is ahead.
Daydreaming
This is another potent and pervasive distraction leading to fatal accidents on the road. The dangerous thing about this is sometimes; the mind just subconsciously slips into the world of imagination and cognitive control of the road is lost. According to shreds of evidence from a statistics released by Erie insurance company, distracted driving accounts for one out of ten fatal crashes in the world, and 61 percent of this drivers admitted to the fact that they were daydreaming when the accident happened. This ranks it as the top most cause of fatal crashes happening as a result of distracted driving in the world today.
Eating while driving
It has been observed by the national highway traffic safety association that eating while driving which seemingly might be perceived safe is a significant cause of fatal crashes. It increases 80 percent more the risk of accidents. Eating as proven not to be as plain simple as merely moving the mouth, it has some other add-on distractions. These distractions could be searching for food-related items like a fork, napkin, water, etc. That millisecond your eyes are off the road; anything can happen. Reaching for an object might be the most delicate part of eating on the road.
Another research conducted shows that reaching for an object like your cell phones, using the touch screen on the dashboard and generally anything that takes your eye off the road accounted for 68 percent of the crashes studied. It is advisable to respond to all nature’s call and demands at home before launching out on the road.
Grooming
Breezing out of the house sometimes because of lateness and for some other reasons, people are forced to take part of their daily routines and tasks into the car to gain back lost time or to catch up with time. This leads them to multitask on the road, often dividing their attention most times from giving the road the proper attention it requires. Grooming could be a whole lot of many activities ranging from combing, polishing shoes to brushing the teeth and the likes.
The most advisable thing to do when situations like this arise is to take your grooming materials to wherever you are going, upon arrival at destination; you could safely do whatever form of activity you necessarily need to do.
Car Electronics
Electronics In the car are also a major cause of car crashes. Navigating with the GPS, altering or initiating a music playlist, turning on/up the radio and all sorts can constitute a major distraction leading to fatal consequences. We would agree music itself could be a form of distraction but on a broader note a less dangerous or even harmless distraction. It is the process of turning on the music that most often causes crashes. This form of distraction should be avoided. This is not to insinuate that driving should be a lifeless activity. If you have a person beside you, there’s no harm in letting that person execute activities that could be possible distractions. Apart from that every driver knows how to check the real speed especially if they have experienced the pretest driving lessons Dublin has to offer for its candidates.
Makeup
This might seem funny, but in fact, it has led to tons of fatal road accidents. As trivial as it might seem, it has claimed a lot of lives and caused a lot of injuries. It is of course mostly recorded among the female population. Quite many ladies have been found to put beauty before safety while on the road.
When applying make up the attention is not on what is ahead but rather what is in the mirror, and safe driving requires a significant amount of concentration. Anything could pop up on the road, and an alert driver even needs at least a few seconds to react to an incident or unforeseen situation on the road.
Applying makeup increases this response time which means that if there is an animal in front of you or something that requires immediate attention, it might not be possible to avert the potential crash.
Women applying makeup also readjust the rearview mirror which could be crucial to averting accidents on the road. The best solution to this is reaching your destination before applying the makeup or doing it before leaving home.
Handling children
Children can be quite an attention demanding. A fight on something seemingly irrelevant is out now, and the next minute it’s a cry for another thing. They are like that by nature. According to research by AAA, child passengers are more likely to cause distractions four times more than adult passengers. The solutions to this might be minimal, but a few of them includes, having another adult that could respond appropriately to their needs, getting a car seat for babies to minimize their clingy strides.
These and many more situations and events are the causes of distracted driving leading to fatal consequences most of the times. It is advisable always to put safety first and toss away distractions as much as possible while on the road.
