Huh....what?? I wasn't Driving Distracted

Distracted Driving, sounds pretty straight forward, your driving, but you're doing something else that is taking your attention away from keeping your car on the road. The US Department of Transportation (http://www.distraction.gov/stats-and-facts/) breaks distracted driving down to three main types of distractions.

Visual – Taking your eyes off the road.
Manual – Taking your hands off the steering wheel.
Cognitive – Taking your mind off what you are doing.

We've all been distracted before; eating that cheeseburger, combing hair, fighting with your significant other while driving, talking on the phone, and texting someone or receiving a text.

Some of the distracted driving studies are scary, using a cell phone just for talking gives people the response times of a person with a BAC of .08, and with texting it gets even worse, four times worse to be exact. During a minute of driving, if you are not texting, you're distracted for 6 seconds, if you are texting you are going to be distracted for 24 seconds. To put that in perspective, a distracted person that is driving 30 mph loses about 260 feet that they travelled, texting increases that to over a thousand feet, which dramatically increases the chances you will be in an accident.

Another thing to consider is that states are catching on to the whole texting while driving and are enacting laws against it the fines can range from a slap on the wrist of $20 to being treated as if you are guilty of a DUI. So even if it is a $20 fine, do you really want to be spending your money that way?

So how do you minimize the distractions? A number of different ways.
Turn off the cell phone.
If you have GPS enter your addresses in before you start driving.
For your radio, just set the station before you take off.
Maintain a proper following distance while driving, so if you do become distracted you do have time to react.
Driving is not the time to have a heated argument or a cathartic release of emotions, it takes you away from concentrating on the road.
Just about every place you can buy prepared food has tables, use them.
The car isn't the place to groom yourself while driving (combing your hair, applying makeup, and yes plucking your eyebrows). You can always freshen up after you've parked the car and no one will be any the wiser.

So why rant on texting? Well that has some of the most comprehensive studies currently. The reality is that you should have your eyes and head in traffic and your hands on the wheel at all times. Not only for your own safety, but to create those positive influences for your children when they start driving.

The strongest habits are the ones that we learn when we are young, so if you give your children a strong foundation of good habits while driving they will carry that forward when they start driving even if they tell you otherwise (but your heart attacks won't stop when they pull out of the driveway). When you talk to them about the responsibility of owning and driving a vehicle, they will have all those years of watching you be a safe driver and the pieces will come together making them a safer driver and eventually allowing you relax when they go out in the car.