The increasing necessity of staying constantly connected is not only driving up blood pressure but also the incidence of road accidents. A lull at a traffic light is no longer a time to perhaps exhale or change the radio station but is rather an opportunity to check text messages or surf the Web.
A recent online study conducted by Manchester, U.K.-based Swinton Car Insurance pointed to smart phone adoption as a cause of the escalating number of people using cell phones while driving. To evaluate the prevalence of smart phone-related distractions, Swinton surveyed 1,200 respondents, 52 percent of whom admitted to exercising little willpower when confronted with the ping of their cell phones while operating a vehicle.
Swinton found that a further 72 percent of these law breakers appear to be workaholics who feel obligated to check emails in the car.
The second most common smart phone distraction might also be the cause of wavering productivity at your office: social networking. Thirty-three percent of respondents update sites such as Twitter and Facebook while on the move.
So is there harm in posting a status update while stuck in traffic? These findings and others suggest there is, as the number of serious fatal road accidents that have happened when a driver was operating a cell phone has leapt 80 percent since laws were established that ban talking and texting while driving.
"Drivers need to resist the temptation of checking their smart phones, as being on the phone [while] driving drastically increases the chance of an accident and poses a serious threat to other motorists and pedestrians," advised Steve Chelton, insurance manager at Swinton.
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