How Serious is Texting While Driving?

We have talked about texting while driving on our website before as well as all the dangers included in texting while you are driving. I wanted to share a story that I came across about a young man from Northwest Iowa who was recently involved in an accident caused from a driver texting while driving, because it really puts the whole driving while texting thing into perspective. This wasn’t a fatal accident, but that doesn’t mean it’s not tragic for the people involved and their family.

The young man who was severely injured was living in Ames at the time of accident and was driving to visit his dad in Sioux City. He was a few miles away from Schaller, Iowa when a car coming over a hill started driving towards him. He didn’t lose consciousness when the vehicles collided and was able to get out of the car; however, when he got out of the car he noticed that something was severely wrong- turns out he had a broken pelvis. The other driver who was doing the texting had suffered a broken foot and was release from the hospital the same night of the accident while the NW Iowa man stayed in the hospital another 15 days which included having an extensive surgery to put his pelvis back together.

This injury has most likely already caused the young man and his family a lot of stress and the worst is not over yet.  He is going to need a lot of treatment and rehabilitation to get better. It is going to take a lot of time and strength for this young back to get back to being his normal self, he will need support from his family and friends as well. The recovery process for an injury like this one can be long and stressful. This accident could have turned out to be a lot worse, but the point is that it still could have been avoided by simply putting the cell phone down and concentrating on the road. The next time you reach for your phone while driving; please think if the text or phone call you are making is really worth the risk of injuring yourself or someone else before you do it. If you would like to read the full story about this young man, please click on the title of this blog post and it will direct you to the article.