Is Texting and Driving More Common In College Towns?
UTAH CAR ACCIDENTS CAUSED BY TEXTING AND DRIVING–CALL/TXT JAKE GUNTER
If you have been involved in a college town accident where student texting and driving caused injury or death, contact your Provo attorney for legal representation. You will be backed by a new Utah law that went into effect during 2009 that lays out strict punishments for drivers who cause accidents while they were texting. College town drivers are more likely to be involved in texting while driving accidents because of the generational makeup of the local population of students.
This law is one of the toughest in the nation, as many states are now banning texting while driving. Utah penalties for texting while driving include being charged with a class C misdemeanor, fines up to $750 and up to three months jail time. If someone is injured or killed because a test messaging driver caused that accident, the texting driver could face a fine of up to $10,000 and 15 years in prison.
You must expect to be in higher danger in college towns from drivers who are texting while at the wheel. National Pew Research statistics show that 80 percent of millennium drivers, aged 18 to 33, admit to texting while driving. With a higher concentration of drivers in that age group living nearby, college towns are a riskier location for accidents that occur while a driver is distracted by texting.
Although all generations admit to using devices like cell phones and text messaging while driving, the millennium group is the most active. They have been brought up in an age of electronic communication and rarely are without some type of electronic communication device. Unfortunately, the attractiveness of using these modes of communication is almost addictive. Young drivers do not heed the warnings about the dangers of distracted driving, and thousands of persons are injured or killed every year because drivers are texting, talking or otherwise not paying full attention to their driving.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that 3092 people were killed in accidental distracted driving crashes during the year 2010. They report that text messaging while driving is similar to being drunk while driving, increasing crash risk by 23 times. The courts view this as an intentional act of negligence. Call an experienced Utah personal injury attorney for legal representation if you or a loved one were injured in a texting while driving accident.
CALL/TXT UTAH PERSONAL INJURY ATTORNEY JAKE GUNTER (801) 373-6345. LET HIS 20 YEARS’S EXPERIENCE WORK FOR YOU
