The Department of Transportation has posted a bunch of videos at YouTube showing "the human toll" of distracted driving accidents. It's part of the agency's effort to crack down on what Secretary Ray LaHood considers a mounting problem in our ever-more-connected society.
If you've seen LaHood speak or follow him on Twitter, you the man takes distracted driving *very *seriously. His concern carries into the the Faces of Distracted Driving videos. Yes, they're posted online and they deal with up-to-the-minute tech like smartphones and our obsession with texting, but the clips have the feel of old-school 16mm driver's ed safety-cum-horror flicks.
The three minute videos each tell the story of a life lost to distracted driving. One tells us about 13-year-old Margay Schee, who was killed after a truck driver plowed into her school bus. Another explains that about Julie Davis, who was hit and killed while hiking. A third video in the series is about 16-year-old Ashley Johnson who was killed after colliding with a pickup truck while texting and driving. According to the DOT, nearly 5,500 people were killed and half a million injured in distracted driving accidents in 2009 alone.
They're tearjerkers, and the DOT hopes they'll make drivers think twice before doing anything other than driving when behind the wheel of a moving car. While public awareness campaigns may not directly change driver behavior, they might help alter the social norm that it's acceptable to be driving while distracted.
Photo: Flickr / Ryan Harvey
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