by Mooky

Created on: August 24, 2007

It's a typical day. Your hands are on the steering wheel and your eyes on the road, just as they should be. Your focus is unmatched. You even notice that red Porsche speeding toward you in your side mirror, obviously hoping to slip through that small opening just between you and the blue Ford ahead.

Then you hear the familiar sound of the Foo Fighters echoing in your purse. You reach in and grab your cell phone.

It'll only take a second, you think, Traffic isn't bad and I've always been a good driver. So, you take one hand off of the wheel and rummage around to find it. Your fingers find only old receipts, lipstick, and a few highlighters. No phone.

You notice you're on a straight stretch of highway and the closes vehicle to you is about one hundred feet ahead. There's no danger, you assure yourself. Your eyes leave the road and you pull your purse in your lap to find your phone. It takes only a few moments now that you can see.

You notice it's stopped ringing. You notice you have a missed call from a family member that you probably wouldn't have wanted to answer in the first place.

What you don't notice is that the vehicle one hundred feet ahead has slammed on his breaks to avoid being hit by that renegade in his Porsche. By the time you notice the squealing and glance up you have just enough time to slam your foot on the brake as well. Your vehicle slows yet it still wasn't enough to keep you from crashing into the back of that car.

In your eyes this scenario may seem rather far-fetched. In actuality it's pretty basic and the statistics to back it are startling.

In 2002, Harvard researchers at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis updated estimates from a 1997 study analyzing the amount of accidents caused by cell phone use that year. It was found that around 2,600 deaths in 2002 could be attributed in some way to cell phone use, creating a ratio that stated at least 1 in 20 accidents were cell phone related.

Compare this to everyday life. We'll use Georgia as an example. In the city of Atlanta, Georgia alone one can hear of at least twenty accidents happening within a span of a day, let alone any major accidents that might prove fatal. But that's 2002, right? You may think that it's possible for those statistics to have fallen in the five years between then and now but that definitely is not a possibility.

Studies by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have shown that average use of cell phones by Americans driving during daylight hours have risen

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