How Multitasking Increases Your Risk of Being in a Car Accident

Most people like to think of themselves as great multitaskers, but there should really be a limit in terms of what kinds of activities you can juggle at the same time.

Listening to a podcast while working on something in your home (and successfully doing both) is generally harmless. The problem is that a lot of people take their ‘multitasking skills’ and apply them to driving. And when that happens, the repercussions are often devastating.

What Does That Mean?

You can be a great driver, and a great multitasker, but when you combine the two you are actually driving while distracted, which means that you’re not 100% focused on the road.

‘Multitasking’ while behind the wheel can take on multiple forms:

• Using your mobile phone
• Looking down to change the radio channel
• Speaking to a passenger
• Looking at something on the side of the road
• Using your smartphone to text someone
• Bend down to pick something you dropped in your car
• Eating/drinking

All these activities potentially put everyone on the road in danger. For one thing, you can easily lose control of the vehicle when you’re not paying attention to the road, or don’t have a firm grip on the wheel. On the other hand, it’s also a matter of reducing your time to react.

Driving can be a volatile activity, and you never know what you’ll encounter up ahead. But when you’re not paying attention, you could potentially drive right into the danger zone, something that could have been prevented if you were not distracted.

What Distracted Driving Can Cause

Distracted driving can often end with devastating car accidents. What’s worse, most of these collisions would have been completely preventable.

Here are some statistics on distracted driving in the US:

• 3,166 people died because of it in 2017 alone
• 599 of people killed in these accidents were nonoccupants (meaning pedestrians or cyclists)
• 9% of all adolescent car crash deaths involved distracted driving
• Drivers under the age of 20 are the most likely to be driving while distracted

Distracted driving can hurt a lot of people. You may think that there is no harm to take just a few seconds to respond to a text, but taking your eyes off the road is dangerous. And in many cases, as it turns out, also fatal for almost everyone involved.

Speak With a Car Accident Attorney

Multitasking has no place behind the wheel. The concept itself is rather debatable, as it turns out only about 2% of the population is truly capable of multitasking. But for the rest, multitasking leads to distracted driving, which puts everyone at great risk.

If you were the victim of a distracted driver, you may be entitled to compensation. Please reach out to a St. Louis car accident lawyer to find out what your best legal options are.