California Highway Safety Authorities Include Distracted Driving in Strategic Plan

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 | Lawyer Marketing

The California Department of Transportation’s Strategy Highway Safety Plan includes measures aimed at minimizing highway accident rates on the state’s highways. Los Angeles personal injury lawyers will be pleased to hear that for the first time, the agency has decided to add distracted driving to the targets in this plan.

The Strategic Highway Safety Plan includes inputs by a number of safety agencies in California, including the California Highway Patrol, California Office of Traffic Safety, California Department of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. Several other agencies and private efforts are involved in proposing measures to tackle individual safety problems.

These problems include:

• Minimizing the number of fatalities caused in alcohol-related car accidents every year
• Minimizing the number of head-on collisions every year
• Promoting use of seatbelts and child safety seats
• Promoting teen motorist safety
• Promoting pedestrian safety by increasing crosswalk use
• Promoting senior motorist safety
• Implementing trucking safety measures
• Enhancing motorcycle safety
• Enhancing bicycle safety
• Promoting highway construction work zone safety

The California Office of Traffic Safety has now decided to add distracted driving to this list. With this, the state DOT and other agencies have made clear their determination to tackle distracted driving on a more aggressive footing. It also means that with the inclusion of distracted driving, there will be targeted measures to prevent handheld cell phone use and texting by motorists. This is expected to include not just enforcement of current handheld cell phone and texting while driving laws, but also promoting greater awareness among motorists about the dangers of such practices.

Unless you’ve lived under a rock over the past year, you have read about or heard about the accident risks that come when a motorist is distracted at the wheel. There have been numerous studies documenting the risks to a motorist when he is distracted. Unfortunately, there seems to be a great disparity between knowledge of these dangers and the will to prevent such behavior. Motorists who are aware of these dangers continue to text or have conversations on a handheld cell phone while driving with nonchalance.

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