Last month one of Sarah's friends from her ward passed away in a driving accident. She is the third young woman from that ward to die in a driving accident, and Sarah's brother Matt was the one to find her car and call 911, so I thought I'd write a blog post to encourage us all to drive safely.
According to the CDC, the #1 cause of death for ages 1-44 was "unintentional injury", and the #1 cause of injury deaths age 5-24 and #2 for age 25 on up was unintentional motor vehicle traffic. Driving may be the most dangerous thing we do as adults. According to distraction.gov, text messaging creates a crash risk 23 times worse than driving while not distracted. Sending or receiving a text takes a driver's eyes from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds, the equivalent--at 55 mph--of driving the length of an entire football field, blind. Headset cell phone use is not substantially safer than hand-held use.
So here's my advice: don't text and don't use your phone while driving. Don't fiddle with the gps. Pull over or do it before you leave. Don't do makeup. Don't be distracted while driving. Avoid driving when you can. Treat driving like it's a very dangerous activity. People love you, be safe.
