Now distracted driving has become so vast among car drivers that, motorcycle riders are catching on faster than anybody would like. The global death count exceeds 1.5 million people in 2010 and each country seems to have just accept this as a part of driving. In the USA research points to 5,800 deaths in car related accidents last year. Drivers simply do not keep both of their eyes focues on the road.
The research point to a growing percentage of time that car drivers look else where while driving. It has reached almost 50% of the time for teens but still holds an average over 25% for the total drivng population. Almost 70% of drivers admit to using the cell phone while driving. Even if, and we use the "if" as a big question mark, they always use the hands free devices, every body admits that talking on the cell phone does not make a safer driver. The roads are less safe period.
When random observation cameras are taking pictures of people while driving they proove that 9% of the drivers on the roads are already on the cell phone at an given time in the USA.
Public roads should be safe. No comprimises on the actual road conditions, the motor vehicle and hopefully soon drivers will be held to the same standards. One suggestion is having drivers under go costly fine for a first offense. Subsequent offenses should be life changing by taking away the license or even jail time. For most people jail time will be preferable.
But think of it. If the distracted driver was held accountable for any ensuing deaths as a murderer and brought to trial. Then that may put things in perspective. In fact it is rather strange that society has sort of let distracted drivers off the hook. Interesting. At least in the USA, the government structure allows for such changes in the law.
In Asia it can be far worse.
Here are some actual photographs to help you decide for yourself.
A few years ago, I read new research from the University of Utah which suggested that driving while using a cell phone gave one roughly the same reactions as a person of 0.08 blood alcohol content - for quite different reasons, but the end result was the same. Remarkably, the study concluded that whether the driver was speaking on a hands-free or holding the phone, the end result was EXACTLY the same. The problem is not the holding of the phone in the car, but the driver's mind being elsewhere.
If 10% of the drivers on the road were driving with 0.08 blood alcohol content, people would be protesting in the streets to change the laws. Logically, such behavior would be stopped immediately in any developed country.
And this chaos has a much greater risk factor. After all, a dented fender on any automobile is equivilent to a broken leg of a motor cycle rider. Cell phones in cars are bad enough and now you can find motorcyle riders using the cell phones wille riding even when they have passengers.
There's an epidemic sweeping the roads of the world called distracted driving, and if you spend a lot of time on the roads, sooner or later it will impact you, quite literally.
So I decided to reduce the risk posed to me by other road users by reducing my time in traffic on a motorcycle. Motorcyclists, pushbike riders and pedestrians are the most vulnerable of road users - they are disproportionately representative in traffic deaths by comparison with car drivers, and similarly, they are way overrepresented in the roughly 75 million road accidents which occur each year across the planet. I did not wish to become a statistic.
In Ho Chi Minh city, for instance, a lengthy journey by motorcycle will take less than half the time taken by a car. In Vietnam, their statistic show that 34 people a day die on the roads.
Even though ridiculous habits are seen on roads world wide, that should not be a comforting factor for the people in America who have a massive media of information to deliver the facts of the dangers in distracted driving. So drivers in the USA are actually making very bad choices while people around the world are merely following bad habits. Nothing to be proud of
As a motorcyclist (and driver and passenger) in Asian countries such as China, Thailand, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, I have seen the same behavior a lot more clearly. In such countries, the motorcycle is more often than not, the first motorized transport the family has ever owned. It is the equivalent of the family car. Car drivers in developed countries still talk without a hands-free, or text, but when everyone rides a motorcycle, texting and talking is there for everyone to see. It also undisguisedly common behavior.
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