The United States government has now chimed in on the texting while driving issue by banning all truck drivers and bus drivers from texting while driving. This ban follows some fairly high profile transportation accidents over the last year. Last April, the driver of an eighteen wheeler slammed into a school bus, killing a student. The driver admitted that he had been texting right before the accident. Sadly, records also show that the conductor of the train in the worst train crash in United States history was sending and receiving text messages just seconds before the crash.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration awarded Virginia Tech a contract to study the effects of texting while driving in an attempt to determine how dangerous it really was. The study took place over three years and included 203 trucks and over 3 million miles driven. The trucks were outfitted with cameras that were able to capture the faces of the drivers in the seconds leading up to a crash or a near miss. The study proved that texting while driving is an extremely dangerous behavior and leads to one of the worst types of driver distraction. The study showed that for the six second time span right before a crash, or near crash, that the drivers who were engaged in texting spent 4.6 of those seconds NOT looking at the roadway. That’s like allowing an eighteen wheeler to travel the length of a football field without his eyes on the road. While larger trucks account for only about 3% of the traffic on the road, they account for close to 12% of all fatal accidents each year. Driver distraction of any kind is a huge problem on America’s roadways, but someone driving a 40 ton vehicle that is not paying attention to the road is a catastrophe waiting to happen. At the present time, 19 states, the District of Columbia and Guam all ban texting while driving for all drivers. Thankfully, the nation’s truckers and bus drivers are now included in that ban regardless of what state they are driving in.
If you have been involved in an accident in the State of California and you believe that texting while driving was wholly or partially to blame for the accident, then you may be entitled to compensation for any injuries you suffered. Any type of distracted driving, including texting, can be the basis for a negligence claim. If the other driver was driving negligently, then they were at least partially responsible for the accident under the personal injury laws of the State of California. Seek the advice of an experienced California personal injury lawyer as soon as possible. An experienced California personal injury lawyer can evaluate the circumstances of your accident to determine what compensation you may be entitled to as a result of the accident. The attorneys at Ledger & Associates are knowledgeable regarding the California personal injury laws and can answer any questions you may have about your specific situation. Give them a call at 1-800-300-0001 or look them up online at www.ledgerlaw.com.
