Almost 4-in-10 People in the US Use Social Media While Driving
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| telegraph.co.uk |
Have you ever scrolled through Facebook while driving? If the answer is yes, please never do it again, but if the answer is a more acceptable ‘No! Who would do such a thing!?’ then you might be shocked to hear that apparently a lot of people do. A survey taken by AT&T in the USA revealed that 7 in 10 daily drivers use their smartphones behind the wheel. Along with the 4-in-10 using social media (mostly Facebook and Twitter), 3-in-10 surf the net and, amazingly, 1-in-10 use video chat.
The sample was taken from 2,000 drivers as a part of the
network company’s It Can Wait campaign, encouraging people to keep their eyes
on the road and off their phones. Texting remains by far and away the most
common phone use for drivers, with email in second and Facebook a close third.
Selfie-taking, Snapchat and Instagram all have shame of place further down on
the list as well. Of those using Twitter, 30% claim to be using it 'all the time', while 22% of social media users claim that they are addicted.
This is a very real, very dangerous problem. In the US in
2012 3,300 people were killed as a result of distracted driving with a further
421,000 injured and in the UK of the 88 fatalities linked to that cause in the
same year, 17 were directly blamed on mobile phone use.
Even without all the statistics, all you need to do is look
around on a car journey and you’ll likely spot someone with one hand on the
wheel and the other wrapped around their phone. I see it all the time, and in
fact in 2008 I was involved in a rear-end collision as a result of someone
texting whilst driving. Thankfully in that case nobody was hurt, but imagine if
it had been worse? You might never have had the pleasure of reading this, or
any of my other articles. What a horrid world that would be.
Misplaced arrogance aside, this grim side effect of
smartphone development is one that needs to be addressed. We are increasingly
existing within a society which leads people to believe that just because they
are able to stay within constant reach of all their contacts and social media
accounts, they should never go more than 10 minutes without checking them.
Nothing anywhere on Facebook or any of the other platforms is so important that
you have no choice but to check it while you’re driving. If your phone bleeps,
bongs or buzzes, just find somewhere safe to pull over, take the time you need
to address it, then put it down and carry on. Do not endanger yourself and
everyone around you for the sake of making sure you weren’t tagged in any embarrassing
photos on the staff night out. Somebody could end up dead.
Callum Davies
Callum is a film school graduate who is now making a name for himself as a journalist and content writer. His vices include flat whites and 90s hip-hop. Follow him @CallumAtSMF
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Almost 4-in-10 People in the US Use Social Media While Driving
Reviewed by Unknown
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Sunday, May 24, 2015
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Reviewed by Unknown
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Sunday, May 24, 2015
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Unknown
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