Vestavia Hills passed a local ordinance that makes it illegal to text while you drive.  Our Alabama Legislature did not pass the bill that had been introduced.  While there may be some issues relating to Vestavia’s ordinance, the fact of the matter is that what they are trying to do is protect you and me.  “Our ordinance recognizes the threat to public safety that is posed by electronic messaging,” said Vestavia Hills’ council president, Mary Lee Rice.  We are likely to see other cities also pass similar laws.

I’ve previously written a number of posts about the dangers of cell phone use while driving.  If you want to text,  save a life and stop driving.

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One of the things that I do as an attorney is a lot of driving. This past week I drove up to Huntsville for the  mediation of a case. Another day, I was headed to the Lovelady Center to lead the Alpha Course, a basic course on Christianity. I noticed that I saw a person checking their phone and texting while driving on the interstate during rush hour traffic. Was he nuts?

You will not see any Olympic athlete texting during their event while they are competing. We have seen some amazing performances taking place at the Olympics and the difference between winning and losing has been in many instances a split second.  Spit seconds also make the difference between someone being in an accident, someone killed in a wreck and someone avoiding a catastrophe. Drive like you are an Olympic Champion, fully focused on what you are doing.

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Okay, I hope that I got your attention. Pretty cool video about the white deer, isn’t it? Sometimes in lawsuits, people think something is strange and not true. One of the biggest misconceptions the public has is that you cannot be seriously hurt from a low impact rear end wreck (what people call whiplash). “Strange” but true that between 15 and 40 percent of patients may develop chronic neck pain (lasting more than six months) after having whiplash according to an article in the October 2007 Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. It has been estimated by some researchers that between five and seven percent of those injured become partially or totally disabled from this type of injury.

Most defense attorneys will want to show how little damage was done to your vehicle. Remember that your vehicle was designed to withstand various levels of impact, your neck whipping forward, however, was not protected from the impact.

I saw a client today who had been a passenger in a car that was hit from behind because the driver was text messaging on her cell phone while driving. The pain, headache, and other harms and losses were strange but really true, because before the accident the was not having any pain. She now has had a headache since the accident that has not gone away.

We have the Thanksgiving Holiday coming up and there will be a lot of people on the highways. Be sure you have your seatbelt on and you will be careful, won’t you? Strange but true injuries can quickly happen in the blink of an eye.

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Monday’s Birmingham News had an article on page 2B about a man killed in Phoenix City in an accident after he reached down to pick up his fallen cell phone. He was 28 years old. His step-father was taken to the hospital for treatment.

I’ve written about the dangers of cell phones and how inattention can have tragic results. Inattention to what you are doing and not doing – distraction – can be fatal to you or someone involved in an accident caused by cell phone use. Humans actually cause death by their inattention when using a cell phone. Be careful!

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The Birmingham News Saturday on page 8B had a sad story, a person on a bicycle was hit and killed by a driver reaching for her cell phone. I recently wrote about this problem in my post accidents and cell phones. Kimberly Kelsey Drawbaugh in Scottsboro did not see Carlos Serrano Sr., an exercise enthusiast, who was killed by the impact. The police report said that she didn’t see him as she was reaching for her cell phone. Serrano was thrown 200 feet from the point of impact.

The newspaper article goes on in some detail about Mr. Serrano and his competitions in marathons and triathlons. (It’s ironic that the company he was the president of made the nylon fibers for air bags.)  He had a son and daughter who were both successful athletes. What a sad day for that family. Their lives have been changed forever. They have begun the journey of grief. The holidays will never be the same. Mr. Serrano won’t be at the weddings of his children nor will he be there to teach important life lessons to his future grandchildren.

Drivers talking on a phone are four times as likely to crash as other drivers, and are as likely to cause an accident as someone with a .08 blood alcohol content (legally drunk). National Highway Traffic Safety Administration researchers estimated that cell phone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents in 2002.

Each of us as human beings have a tendency to believe that “it” (something bad) won’t happen to me.  For the driver of the car reaching for their cell phone, they don’t think that they are taking someone’s life into their hands.  Think again and reconsider what you do when driving.

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