Up to 30 per cent of car accidents is caused by distracted driving and youre 23 times more likely to crash if youre texting while behind the wheel.
And in the five seconds you took to simply read that life or death text message, you could have, if your speed was 70 kmph, traveled the length of a football field.
Yet Richmond drivers dont seem to be getting the message and more of them are turning into crotch-starers, peering at their cellphones on their laps in an attempt to evade detection by police.
Im not sure if its happening more, its hard to tell. But its still pretty prevalent, said Sergeant Rob Quilley, of Richmond RCMPs Road Safety Unit.
I think theres more people trying to hide it now that its illegal. They keep it on their lap, so what you find is a whole lot of drivers staring at their crotch.
We know what theyre doing, but its difficult to enforce it. To be honest, that practice is even more dangerous than before, when they had their heads up.
During February, Quilleys team carried out a Distracted Driving Campaign and, over just four operations, handed out 143 violations for using an electronic device. For the same month last year, they dished out just 58 tickets.
Even taking into account that more officers were on duty this time around, its still an indication that cell phone use while driving is on the rise.
Its not difficult to find them when were out there looking for it, said Quilley.
Its especially noticeable at intersections, when people are slowing down or are stopped.
New research into the level of distraction caused by using a cellphone while driving, indicates that texting while behind the wheel is akin to drinking and driving.
John Vavrik, a research psychologist for ICBC, said it goes without saying that that taking your eyes off the road causes problems, but now its your hands and minds as well.
What research is finding is that the new Smartphones are much more addictive, they do more things for you and theyre basically harder for people to put down, said Vavrik.
Theres also more going on on those little screens than ever before and thats obviously more distracting.
Its a little bit like when you subconsciously check your watch. This is whats happening with people and their phones, its a reflex and is addictive behaviour. People cant live without them and its an integral part of their lives.
The number of people behaving in such ways is increasing, said Vavrik, but the problem is theres not much of a footprint left, unlike alcohol, when a breath test can usually determine if an offence has been committed.
Ten years ago, the distracted driving focus zoomed in on the difference between hand-held and hands-free devices. But, according to Vavrik, it seems that hands-free is not that much better.
What weve found is that, even on a hands-free, the driver has trouble judging the speed of oncoming traffic, especially at a left-hand turn, he said.
Also, people tend to drive slower when theyre on the phone. That may seem like a good idea, but its not.
They tend to deviate from their lane more often and the cause the speed of the lane to become unstable. When the brain is engaged in more than one activity, and when that activity is more elaborate, the more and more attention is taken away from the road and devoted to that phone conversation, which the brain is giving priority to.
When youre on the phone to someone, Vavrik pointed out that people will usually feel the need to keep the conversation going all the time.
Whereas, when youre talking to a passenger in your car, there is less of a need to fill the air with words and there are four eyes on the road.
A 2012 Ipsos Reid survey conducted on behalf of ICBC shows that B.C. drivers consider texting while driving to be just as risky as drinking and driving.
Distracted driving is the third leading cause of fatal car crashes in B.C., with an average of 94 deaths per year due to distractions such as using a personal electronic device behind the wheel.
And studies in Alberta and Australia are now indicating that reading billboards is also an increasing problem.
University of Alberta researcher Michelle Chan has made a case for regulating emotional distractions while driving.
Chan devised an experiment using a driving simulator, in which participants drove past 20 billboards in one of three scenarios. The billboards in each scenario contained different types of words:
* Positive words (such as beach, love, cheer or win)
* Negative words (such as cancer, stress, ulcer or killer)
* Neutral words (such as engine, statue, lawn or pencil)
The results showed that all three groups showed some driver distraction, but the highest levels and those indicating greater driver risk occurred with the emotionally charged words.
Chan has pointed to Australia as an example of a country with developed billboard content laws.
But its not just cellphone-using drivers that are the modern day scourge of the road.
Quilley revealed some of the worst sights hes seen in recent years in terms of drivers displaying new depths of arrogance and stupidity.
There has been people eating soup, cereal and even eating noodles with chopsticks, he said.
This guy had his forearms on the wheel and held the bowl of noodles with his hands.
But the worst are the crotch-starers; their eyes are not even on the road.
