What could be so important that you would risk your life or others while traveling?

The Ottawa County Sheriff’s office reported that crash that injured two people and temporarily closed a section of eastbound I-96 Saturday was caused by a distracted driver, according Mlive.com...

Deputies believe the 27-year-old woman was traveling eastbound on the highway at around 70 mph in a Hyundai Elantra. At some point, she looked down at her cell phone and rear-ended a Toyota Prius driven by a 36-year-old man from Comstock Park. The man driving the Prius had slowed down for a traffic backup due to road construction and a lane closure. A 3-year-old female passenger in the Prius suffered a femur fracture and was taken by ambulance to DeVos Children’s Hospital.

A cell phone was more important then the safety of others. There is nothing that anyone needs to know from their cell phone when traveling 70 miles per hour. It is just lucky that the child only suffered injuries rather than losing her life.

Edgarsnyder.com lists a number of national statics involving driving while using a phone cell in one way or another. Some of the scariest fact are presented by the National Safety Council.

The National Safety Council reports that...

  • Cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year.
  • Nearly 390,000 injuries occur each year from accidents caused by texting while driving.
  • 1 out of every 4 car accidents in the United States is caused by texting and driving.
  • Texting while driving is 6x more likely to cause an accident than driving drunk.
  • Texting while driving causes a 400 percent increase in time spent with eyes off the road.
  • 94 percent of drivers support a ban on texting while driving.

Granted the person who caused the crash was not "texting or talking" on their cell phone while driving. Yet, they were searching for their phone while operating a vehicle...eyes off the road and the phone was the most important thing on their mind at that moment. Nothing is as important as ones safety! If you need your phone, or want to respond to something, please, please, pull over!

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