For years, police and traffic safety experts have said texting while driving can be as deadly as drunk driving.
Police across western Washington are driving that message home, with a coordinated enforcement of Washington state laws against texting while driving.
As Officer Bill Wingrove said in this KIRO 7 piece about the effort, “A lot of people do not take it seriously and it’s a leading cause within traffic fatalities and serious injuries here in Washington — 20 percent just in fatalities.”
According to preliminary crash data collected by the Washington State Traffic Safety Commission, there were 317 deaths from crashes in 2013.
The raw numbers aren’t the whole story. Many crashes involve multiple causes – a drunk may also be speeding, a texting driver may also run off the road.
National studies say 23 percent of all car crashes in America during 2011 involved drivers using cell phones – a total of 1.3 million wrecks.
It is still legal in Washington state to talk on your cell phone while driving if you have both hands on the wheel, meaning you need to use a speaker phone or earpiece.
If you’re caught during this law enforcement crackdown, the fine for texting while driving is $124.
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Texting while driving? Tell it to the judge!
Crash data courtesy of the Washington State Traffic Safety Commission.