What if you were about to have surgery, and as you were being placed on the table you noticed your surgeon holding a scalpel in one hand, and texting someone with the other hand. 
Personally, I would run out of the room and call an Uber to take me home as quickly as possible so I could Google for a new doctor. A surgeon is supposed to focus on the operation!
And a driver is supposed to focus on the road.
Yet every day drivers all over Florida risk their lives and the lives of others when they take their focus off the road by texting, putting on makeup, drinking a cup of coffee, turning around to speak with someone in the back seat, or any number of other distracting activities. Florida lawmakers are fed up with this behavior and the serious accidents it causes and they are finally committed to do something about it.
Florida has for years been one of the weakest states when it comes to legislation prohibiting distracted driving. For example, you can hold a phone in your hand in Florida but you’re not supposed to use it to text or send emails. This is obviously difficult to prove, and an officer must have another reason for stopping a driver before they can even look into the possibility there was a text message sent while driving. In many other states you can’t hold a phone at all when driving.
Currently in Tallahassee legislators are considering very broad legislation that would actually make Florida laws among the strictest in the nation. They are considering enacting statutes that would ban many different types of distracted driving including personal grooming, petting a dog, and even eating if it distracts the driver.
Distracted driving killed 3,450 people in 2016
Was the human brain designed to multitask while driving?
Here is a line from a job search on Indeed.com: “Strong organizational skills with the ability to multitask and prioritize work.” So you may be very popular at work if you can accomplish many tasks at the same time, and the boss may be very pleased but please don’t do it behind the wheel. Everyone is in a hurry to get too many things done, but as sophisticated as our brains are, they simply cannot handle it.
The human brain, according to many psychological studies, is not designed to handle multiple challenges at the same time, especially while driving. The act of driving is keeping your brain extremely busy, and when you throw in a totally separate action like reading an email the brain disconnects from it’s main focus. This is why there have been cases of people getting on the highway going the wrong way or slamming into stopped vehicles. Make no mistake about it, no matter how smart you may think you are your brain will not handle distracted driving, at least not for very long. If you are driving with distractions now and you haven’t crashed yet, you’re running on luck. It will end someday, and you may hurt someone very badly.
South Florida Vehicle Accident Attorneys
Gary and Arleen Lazarus have worked for many injured victims of serious accidents over the past 25 years and many of the crashes have been caused by distracted drivers. We have watched clients suffer through terrible, permanent injuries that never should have happened. Please don’t wait for a new law to do what you should be doing now: put your phone away when you drive, don’t answer calls, and don’t text. There is nothing on earth that can’t wait a short while for you to get off the road, park in a safe place, turn the car off, and take care of your calls and messages.
If you have questions or need someone to help you with a personal injury issue please call us st (954) 356-0006, and thank you for your attention.
Would you like to talk with your representatives and tell them how you feel about distracted driving? Click here and enter your address – the website will then give the contact information for your representatives. Please reach out to them and tell them you want to see and end to dangerous drivers who don’t focus on their driving.
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