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Santa Clarita residents are being encouraged to not use their cellphones while driving and the CHP has launched a major effort to crack down on distracted driving

California Traffic Safety And Highway Patrol Crack Down On Distracted Driving

Santa Clarita residents are being encouraged to not use their cellphones while driving and the CHP has launched a major effort to crack down on distracted driving, officials said Wednesday.


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Eighty percent of vehicle crashes involve some sort of driver inattention, according to the California Highway Patrol. Though distracted driving has long been an issue, the popularity of cellphones and social media in recent years has greatly increased the risk and is now the number one source of driver inattention.

“Distracted driving has become a dangerous epidemic nationwide and we want to do everything we can to stop it here and now,” said former OTS Acting Director Russia Chavis. “…By working together, we can eliminate crashes and the senseless loss of lives of that can result from distracted driving.”

Using a cell phone reduces the amount of brain activity associated with driving by 37 percent and delays a driver’s reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent, according to CHP officials.

Text messaging while driving is not only illegal, but it creates a crash risk 23 times worse than driving while not distracted, according to CHP officials. California is one of 35 states to ban texting while driving and is one of nine states that prohibits all drivers from using handheld devices while driving.

Distracted driving is especially a problem among teenagers and newly licensed drivers, said Officer John Lutz, spokesman for the CHP Newhall Office.

Research from the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center or SafeTREC, at the University of California, Berkeley, is in favor of distraction and hands free driving, according to CHP officials.

When looking at state crash records two years before and two years after the hand-held ban went into effect, overall traffic deaths declined 22 percent while hand-held cell phone driver deaths went down 47 percent.

Similar results were shown for hands-free cell phone use as well as injuries in both categories, according to CHP officials.

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Ed. Note: The California Highway Patrol contributed to this report. 

California Traffic Safety And Highway Patrol Crack Down On Distracted Driving

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