Reading When Driving Can Cause Chicago Car Accidents
Surprisingly, there are people who read while driving a motor vehicle. This is a form of distracted driving that happens more often than you would think. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, reading while driving triples the odds that a driver might become involved in a motor vehicle accident.
Examples of reading while driving:
• Reading text messages
• Reading emails
• Surfing the Internet on a PDA or cell phone
• Reading a map
• Reading directions
• Reading books or newspapers
Reading while driving can prove dangerous because a driver likely will have to take his or her eyes off the road. The motorist’s cognitive attention is focused on the material being read, which can take a driver’s overall focus off the road and away from driving safely.
Some people may get bored in traffic and decide to pick up a book or surf the Web while their vehicle isn’t moving. It can be challenging to for a motorist to stop reading once the pace of traffic picks up and they may continue reading—especially when traffic is moving at a stop-and-go pace, increasing the chances of a driver becoming involved in a rear-end crash that can turn into a chain reaction, multi-vehicle crash.
Reading, painting your nails, texting, talking on a cell phone, watching a DVD, surfing the Internet may seem like harmless activities until a motorist does them while getting behind the wheel of a car. People have sustained catastrophic, even fatal Chicago car crash injuries because a driver was distracted from multi-tasking while driving.
Careless Driving Tickets: Reading While Driving, National Safety Commission, July 16, 2009
Driver Inattention, National Safety Council
Related Web Resources:
NHTSA
You may be entitled to Chicago personal injury compensation if you were seriously injured in a Cook County car accident because of a distracted Illinois driver. Contact Chicago car accident lawyer Steve Malman today.
