If you hold your phone or send out text messages while driving in April, you may just end up with a ticket in your hand.
This month is National Distracted Driving Awareness Month and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has identified texting and cell phone use as the fastest growing and most visible factors in collisions.
Since California enacted a ban on hand-held cell phone use in 2008, deaths due to cell phone use have dropped.
An analysis released this week by the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center (SafeTREC) at the University of California, Berkeley, showed that when looking at state crash records two years before and two years after the hand-held ban went into effect, overall traffic deaths went down 22 percent while hand-held cell phone driver deaths went down 47 percent.
Similar results were shown for hands-free cell phone use as well as injuries in both categories.
“These results suggest that the law banning hand-held cell phone use while driving had a positive impact on reducing traffic fatalities and injuries,” said Dr. David Ragland, Director of SafeTREC.
