Eating? Shaving? You're a distracted driver too

Cellphone use accounts for some distracted driving, but eating and other distractions can be just as dangerous. (Thinkstock)

While driving a car, have you ever:

• Reprogrammed your GPS device?

• Retrieved something you or a child dropped?

• Searched for a particular CD?

• Put on makeup or shaved?

• Struggled to open a package of nuts or chips?

Perhaps you never have texted or talked on a cellphone while operating a motor vehicle. But if you have engaged in any of the above activities, you are just as guilty of distracted driving as if you had.

It's easy to become complacent. Maybe you're a good driver, and you've gotten away with such actions for years. Maybe you managed to avert a near-accident when your attention returned to the road in the nick of time. But one of these days, your luck may run out and you, or someone you hit, could be maimed for life or dead.

"Driving while distracted is roughly equivalent to driving drunk," Dr. Amy N. Ship, an internist at Harvard Medical School, wrote last year in a commentary in The New England Journal of Medicine. "Any activity that distracts a driver visually or cognitively increases the risk of an accident. None of them is safe."

Raising awareness
Following widespread publicity about the hazards of distracted driving, medical groups are working hard to make patients more aware of the problem. The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Orthopaedic Trauma Association launched a Decide to Drive campaign that calls attention to the increasing number of distractions by multitasking drivers and the resulting toll on people's lives.

"We take care of a lot of people injured in car accidents, and distracted driving is a substantial contributor to these accidents," says Dr. Daniel Berry, president of the academy. "If we could get rid of this part of our practice, it would be a great service to the people we care for."

Orthopedists would do very well, thank you, without the business generated by the more than 307,000 crashes that occurred in 2011, according to estimates from the National Safety Council, involving drivers talking on cellphones or texting.

"We don't expect our campaign to change everyone's behavior overnight," Berry says. "It took a lot of years to get the message across about using seat belts or driving drunk.
We're adding our voice to those of others — the more jungle drums, the better."

Among those beating the drums are the parents of Eric Okerblom, a 19-year-old college student who was struck by a car and killed in 2009 while cycling near his home in Santa Maria, Calif.; the driver, a teenager, was traveling 60 mph while texting on her cellphone. His father, Bob Okerblom, did a cross-country bike ride, blogging along the way in order to spread the word about distracted driving.

Website launched
In November 2010, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood introduced a website called "Faces of Distracted Driving" (distraction.gov) that explores the cost these behaviors inflict on families and communities. "Distracted driving has become a deadly epidemic on America's roads," says LaHood, who urges bans on drivers texting and using phones or other devices.

The orthopedists' campaign will try to raise the national consciousness and change future driving behavior by taking their message to schoolchildren, especially those in grades 5-8, who may discourage their parents and siblings from driving distracted and refrain themselves when they become drivers.

Berry advises, "If you're going to drive, just drive." Take care of potentially distracting activities before you start the car. Set the GPS device, pour the coffee or open the soda, make calls, write the shopping list. If you can't resist answering your cellphone while driving, turn it off and let it take messages.

If you need to make a call, reset the GPS unit, deal with a distressed child or eat a sandwich, pull off the road to do it. The minutes spent being safe could save you countless hours of misery.