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Bad Things Can Happen
It was dusk, and a typical New England fog was rolling in as Daniel Voutiritsa cruised up the Maine Turnpike to his home in Sanford on March 20, 2003. Voutiritsa, 32, was behind the wheel of a rented Ryder box truck he was driving for Stericycle, a medical waste disposal company. He was alone but talking on a handheld cell phone with his wife. When his exit came up fast, he swerved from the middle lane to the right to get off the highway. Apparently he didn't notice the car next to him in the slow lane.
His truck hit 38-year-old Zack Gaulkin, an editor who was headed home to Kennebunkport from his job near Boston. To save gas on the 200-mile round-trip, Gaulkin drove a compact Toyota Corolla wagon. The truck clipped the Toyota's rear and catapulted the car into the fast lane, directly in the path of a 60-foot-long, 40-ton tractor trailer. Gaulkin's widow, Terri, was left to raise three small children.
It might seem obvious to say that when drivers stop paying attention to the road, even for a few seconds, bad things can happen. Yet most of us admit to occasionally changing the radio station, assisting a child or programming the GPS while in motion. You look up—and suddenly you're in the wrong lane or grazing the shoulder or coming up fast on a stopped car. Phew, that was close!
Too close, too often, according to a mounting chorus of experts:
• The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found, in a study released in April 2006, that the vast majority of accidents—nearly 80 percent—could be prevented if drivers paid more attention. (Before you say, "Well, duh!" consider that accidents can also be caused by vehicle malfunction, road hazards and other factors unrelated to driver error.) The real-world study involved 100 cars fitted with cameras and sensors, driven nearly two million miles. Participants had 82 real accidents and 761 near crashes.
• Nationwide Insurance, which conducted a survey in November 2006, suggested that distracted driving is a national pastime. Of 1,200 respondents, ages 18 to 60, 73 percent said they use a cell phone while driving; 68 percent eat while driving. Others shave, read, even paint their toenails in traffic.
• Gadget-obsessed teen drivers are perhaps the most distracted. In a national survey from State Farm Insurance and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia released in January, more than half of teens polled said they saw other teens driving while text messaging or using handheld games and other tech gear.
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