Most Colorado Teens Use Cellphone While Driving
(From the Flickr caption) My wife was sitting at a redlight when a jerk talking on his hands free cell phone going at 50 MPH rear ended my wife because he was not paying attention to the road. . . . My son suffered a severe brain injury in this accident . . . [T]he driver of the Ford Expedition that was on his phone received a $200 fine and went on with his life. Image and caption (edited) by Frank Patrick Brady.
Driving while on a cellphone is nuts. It poses a danger to other drivers and an an acute danger to more vulnerable users of the streets -- cyclists, pedestrians, and kids playing in the street.
It's dangerous out there, and it looks as if it will get even worse. From a AAA survey of Colorado teens:
1. 97% of Colorado teens surveyed believe text messaging while driving is dangerous.
2. 51% of Colorado teens surveyed admitted to texting while driving, compared to 46% of teens surveyed nationally in AAA/Seventeen magazine survey*.
3. 66% of Colorado teens surveyed admit to talking on the cell phone while driving . . .
5. 81% of Colorado teens surveyed believe there should be some legal limitation on cell phone use (including text messaging) while driving.
6. 73% of Colorado teens surveyed say that strict driving penalties (such as losing your license) would make them less likely to text message while driving.
7. 38% of Colorado teens surveyed admit to taking their eyes off the road when texting while driving.
I don't think this is a particularly scientific survey. Still the results are alarming. There are a lot of inexperienced drivers out there who are further distracted because they are using their cellphones.
Not that the results are surprising. If parents use their cellphones while driving (which seems to be the case), why would anyone expect their children to behave any better?
If there's any good news here, it's that teens know that driving while using a cellphone is dangerous and that 81% of Colorado teens think laws limiting cellphone use while driving are a good idea. The bad news, of course, is that they do it anyway.
Neither Denver nor Colorado have seen fit to limit in any real way cellphone use while driving. Denver has no restrictions at all. The only Colorado law restricting cellphone use, C.R.S. 42-4-239, applies solely to drivers with instruction permits. The maximum fine for a violation is $100, and cops are prohibited from stopping someone who is only violating the cellphone limit. I wonder whether the law has ever been enforced.
