Confident to text while driving? It costs 25% of ALL car accidents: 1,600,000/yr, 330,000 injuries/yr, 11 teen deaths EVERY DAY

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Texting while driving is a growing trend, and a national epidemic, quickly becoming one of the country’s top killers. Drivers assume they can handle texting while driving and remain safe, but the numbers don’t lie.

Texting While Driving Causes:
1. 1,600,000 accidents per year – National Safety Council
2. 330,000 injuries per year – Harvard Center for Risk Analysis Study
3. 11 teen deaths EVERY DAY – Ins. Institute for Hwy Safety Fatality Facts
4. Nearly 25% of ALL car accidents

Texting While Driving Is:
1. About 6 times more likely to cause an accident than driving intoxicated
2. The same as driving after 4 beers – National Hwy Transportation Safety Admin.
3. The number one driving distraction reported by teen drivers

Texting While Driving:
1. Makes you 23X more likely to crash – National Hwy Transportation Safety Admin.
2. Is the same as driving blind for 5 seconds at a time – VA. Tech Transportation Institute
3. Takes place by 800,000 drivers at any given time across the country
4. Slows your brake reaction speed by 18% – HumanFactors & Ergonomics Society
5. Leads to a 400% increase with eyes off the road

A lot of times, we often wear our technology addictions as a badge of honor. Many people say “Oh, I’m so addicted to my phone. I can’t live without it. It’s like air.”

Here are several reasons why you shouldn’t be addicted to your phone.
In 2011, 25%, i.e. 1.3 million crashes were caused due to texting, and 11 teens die every day due to texting while driving. Texting makes a crash up to 23x more likely.

we should not be slaves to our devices. Have you heard the story where a 32-year old man was following his GPS directions when he turned onto a train track, got stuck as a fast-moving train approached, and had to abandon his rental car. He made it out okay, but the car was destroyed. The response from a was that the GPS had clearly not given the correct instructions, and he said ‘If your GPS told you to drive off a cliff, would you do it.’ A lot of our devices exist to assist us with making decisions, not for us to abandon our own logic and blindly follow.

We should observe the world around us. Have you ever seen anyone nearly walk into a pole because he was too busy texting, or have you yourself narrowly avoided bumping into someone or something because you were too busy texting? A study was done at a college campus in which they had a guy dress up in a clown outfit and ride around on a uni-cycle for an hour around a prominent sculpture. Many of the students who were engaged in phones completely missed the clown, even as they walked right past him.

The time could be put to use doing something else. Perhaps you’ve always wanted to learn a new language or develop a new hobby, such as painting, but you just don’t have the time. According to a recent survey the average adult spends about 45 per cent of his waking hours either online, on the phone, or watching television. To put that into perspective, if you’re awake for an average of 15 hours a day, then about 7 hours daily is spent consuming technology. In that time you could have become the next Picasso!

Health benefits. Have you heard the rumors/warnings that cell phones might cause cancer? Although it is not proven, research is still going on. So why not decrease your time on the cancer-causing device?

So there are several reasons why you shouldn’t be addicted to your phone.

With the volume of sent text messages increasing from over 50 billion in 2005 to more than 1.7 TRILLION in 2010, it's easy to understand that texting and driving has become of the nation's leading causes of auto accidents in the United States.

Worldwide over 350 billion text messages, also known as “SMS Messages,” are exchanged across the world’s mobile networks every month.

If you needed more proof that texting is on the rise, here's a stat for you: the average teenager sends more than 3,000 texts per month. That's more than six texts per waking hour. According to a new study from Nielsen, our society has gone mad with texting, data usage and app downloads. Nielsen analyzed the mobile data habits of more than 60,000 mobile subscribers and surveyed more than 3,000 teens during April, May and June of this year. The numbers they came up with are astounding.

The number of texts being sent is on the rise, especially among teenagers age 13 to 17. According to Nielsen, the average teenager now sends 3,339 texts per month. There's more, though: teen females send an incredible 4,050 texts per month, while teen males send an average of 2,539 texts. Teens are sending 8% more texts than they were this time last year. Other age groups don't even come close, either; the average 18- to 24-year-old sends "only" 1,630 texts per month. The average only drops with other age groups.

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Image courtesy phone addiction and digitalsynopsis.com