Don’t text and drive, it could take your life

Using a mobile phone while driving can be fatal. But is that message getting through?

The Abu Dhabi RTA has intensified patrols to catch drivers using mobile phones. (WAM)

There are many factors that make driving one of the more dangerous everyday human activities. While some hazards are beyond our control as drivers, too many accidents are caused, or contributed to, by our own negligence. We speed, tailgate, fail to indicate that we are turning and leave safety belts unbuckled. In recent years, technology has brought one more fatal factor into the mix – the mobile phone.

Sending text messages or operating other apps while behind the wheel has become a major cause of road deaths worldwide and a leading cause of accidents. The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that text-driving is six times more dangerous than driving while drunk. Texting is now the main cause of death for teenage drivers in America, where it accounts for more than 3,000 fatalities and 330,000 injuries each year.

While there is no similar breakdown of accident causes in the UAE, texting has been linked to several well-documented road deaths, including that of Emirati international footballer Theyab Awana who drove into the back of a lorry while using his BlackBerry three years ago. The fact that more than 30,000 tickets were issued in Abu Dhabi last year to drivers who were using a mobile phone illustrates the magnitude of the problem. With one of the world’s highest per capita road tolls – according to the World Health Organisation, UAE drivers are seven time more likely to die in a crash than motorists in the UK – we cannot afford to be complacent.

As Thomas Edelmann, the founder of Road Safety UAE, told The National, the country must develop a safe-driving culture that includes public awareness of the dangers of texting. Perhaps local filmmakers could take inspiration from US-based German director Werner Herzog, whose documentary One Second to the Next tells the heartbreaking stories of victims and perpetrators of accidents involving text-driving. The film was sponsored by telecoms company AT& T, with the support of all the US mobile phone service providers. Etisalat and du could consider joining forces for a similar campaign here, to find and tell the stories of local victims of that heedless offence – texting while driving. The solution is simple: just don't do it. If the temptation is too great, use one of several available compartments to store your phone and make it impossible to use while driving. What message could be so important that it's worth dying for?