Daily Herald opinion: ‘Intexticated’ driving: Secretary of state’s new program calls attention to ‘an epidemic in America’
We can’t let Distracted Driving Awareness Month end today without a reminder that all drivers should take with them all year long.
Don’t X and drive.
Don’t adjust your phone’s music app and drive.
Don’t try to read email and drive.
Don’t do your makeup and drive.
Don’t manage the steering wheel with your knees while you eat a hamburger and drive.
Please, don’t text and drive.
Just drive.
Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias had a stark message for drivers of all ages last week as he announced a new public safety campaign that will include the requirement for all high school students seeking a learner’s permit to watch a video on distracted driving first.
“Make no mistake,” Giannoulias said as he announced his “One Road. One Focus” campaign, “Distracted driving is an epidemic in America. It is the drunk driving of our time.”
Safety officials have focused in recent years on mobile phone use in their warnings about distracted driving, but Giannoulias noted that is not the only activity that puts lives at risk on the roadways. Anything that takes drivers’ minds off the task literally at hand can divert their attention away from the road in front of them or the scores of risks next to or behind them and lead to tragedy.
As our transportation writer Marni Pyke reported Tuesday, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data show that nearly 3,300 people were killed and more than 300,000 injured last year in vehicle crashes involving distracted driving.
Young drivers - those between 15 and 34 years old - are most likely to be involved, which may provide more fodder for seniors grumbling over the state’s requirements for annual driving tests for older drivers. But the problem infects us all, and the upper end of those age statistics seems only likely to expand if the dangers are not impressed on drivers from the very beginning.
“Despite understanding the dangers, people still give in to the temptation to pick up their phone while behind the wheel,” Giannoulias said, emphasizing that truly overcoming requires “a cultural shift” in the attitudes we all carry regarding activities that put drivers, their passengers and other people on the road around them at risk.
“Distracted driving remains socially acceptable for so many of us. That’s why we need to do more to stigmatize ‘intexticated’ driving,” the secretary of state said.
With $77,000 in federal grant money, Giannoulias’ office is expanding monitoring of high-volume traffic locations, and the attention from other police and public safety officials will surely help enforce laws designed to curb distracted driving. But enforcement can do only so much.
The ultimate solution rests in that “cultural shift” we all need to make. Let’s not forget to make note of it today as Distracted Driving Awareness Month ends, but let’s also make it a part of our everyday driving behavior.