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STOP THE TEXTS; STOP THE WRECKS

  • Five seconds is the average time your eyes are off the road while texting. When traveling at 55 mph, that's enough time to cover the length of a football field.
  • A texting driver is 23 times more likely to get into a crash.
  • Of those killed in distracted driving related crashes, 18 percent involved reports of a cell phone as a distraction.
  • Using a cell phone while driving, whether it's handheld or hands-free, delays a driver's reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent.
  • Texting while driving contributes to more than 100,000 accidents per year on average.
  • Seventy-seven percent of young adults are "very" or "somewhat" confident that they can safely text while driving.
  • Forty-eight percent of young drivers have seen their parents driving while talking on a cell phone, and 15 percent have seen their parents text while driving.
  • One in five drivers of all ages confess to surfing the Web while driving.
  • Texting while driving is about six times more likely to cause an accident than driving intoxicated.
-- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and National Safety Council