“We are always distracted while driving! Using my cell phone is no different than listening to the radio or talking to a passenger”

This is a common opinion on the issue of distracted driving. To be fair, its proponents have some evidence on the matter. Earlier this month, a FedEx employee was in a serious car accident after he choked on a pork rind. British researchers recently determined that listening to sports commentary on the radio reduces reaction times to 20%, about the same as driving while intoxicated.

It takes only a moment's inattention behind the wheel for a crash to happen.  NHTSA estimates that driver distraction causes 80% of all automobile crashes, which lead to thousands of deaths annually.  Those preventable fatalities represent just one of the many consequences of distracted driving.  Watch this video to get a sober and realistic look at the risks distracted driving creates for corporate employers:

Hot on the heels of last month's GHSA report on states' myriad efforts to prevent distracted driving, six states have undertaken legislative action to restrict or prohibit handheld cell phone use while driving.  On July 1, texting bans came into effect in four states: Georgia, Iowa, Michigan and Wyoming.

Yesterday, just as ZoomSafer was releasing our new Bluetooth Beta software, there was other news in the business world about distracted driving and Bluetooth car kits; Ford announced that the next release of their Ford SYNC car kit will have a "Do Not Disturb" button which, when pressed, will block all incoming calls, text messages, typing on the keypad and will narrow some other features like navigation. To which my first response would have to be... "wait, the Ford SYNC software has features that call for a driver to be typing on a keypad?!"

A new group of car makers, wireless companies and safety advocates have formed the DRIVE Coaliton, with aims to counter the recent rise in distracted driving legislation.

The last few days have seen a lot of media attention about the new study from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, which found adults to be even worse distracted drivers than the teens they so often express concern about. You can find the details here but the basic gist of it is that about half of all texting adults have sent or read texts while driving.

So what does that mean for a company concerned about the risks brought on by texting employees? Well, it probably means that your employees are doing it, for one. Or at least half of them are and that’s bad enough.

Twitter and Facebook usually get all the hype due their size and ubiquity, but this week, the spotlight's on professional networking service LinkedIn.

On Tuesday, June 15, the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) issued a new report on states' efforts to prevent distracted driving, "Curbing Distracted Driving: 2010 Survey of State Safety Programs".  According to a GHSA press release, the report surveyed highway safety agencies in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam and surfaced seven key findings:

 A group of middle schoolers in Buck County, PA have devised TEXTerminator, an automobile device that will shut down a user's phone in order to prevent distracted driving. The TEXTerminator would use electronic signaling to block a phone's texting functions after the phone has been specially programmed.  Two Subaru engineers advised the student team on design and electronics.