LANSING, Mich. — Police have put a lot of time and energy into preventing distracted driving in the last few years --but it's not stopping the problem.
The chances of being in a car accident increase dramatically in bad weather or bad traffic conditions, but when you're driving distracted, whether that's being on your phone or changing the radio station, those crashes happen much more often.
"Every day we see some sort of distracted driving. I've seen people putting makeup on, reading the newspaper, laptops in the passenger compartment, so they're reaching over and typing," Sargent Nick Darlington, of the Michigan State Police said.
"All those things are taking your eyes off the road and we want people to pay attention," Captain Kyle Bowman, of Michigan State Police said.
Now, police are demonstrating how little time drivers have to react to a car in front of them. That reaction time, decreases quickly, with a phone in your hand.
"If you're not paying attention, you don't have a lot of time to react," Bowman said."The average text message takes your eyes off the road for five seconds."
At 70 miles per hour, you can travel more than the length of a football field in those five seconds. The number of distracted drivers in Michigan is staggering and police say it's only getting worse.
"Between 2016 and 2018, there were 223,000 traffic crashes that were...people weren't paying attention to the vehicles in front of them," Bowman said.
Between that and following too closely, car crashes happen more than they should.
"These crashes we're seeing on the freeway are preventable," Bowman said.
Police hope that their demonstration will show drivers how dangerous distracted and close driving can be otherwise.
"Our only option is to take enforcement action and write a ticket. That's not our goal, we don't want to have to do that, but we will to keep the motoring public safe."
So just remember when you're behind the wheel, there's nothing as important, not even your phone as getting to you destination in one piece.
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