Let America Know is a grassroots advocacy organization supported by trial lawyers and law firms to increase public understanding of safety issues. It’s in place to give a voice to those who want to speak out on legal and social issues that affect public safety.
In recognition of National Distracted Driving Month in April 2012, Let America Know has made a significant commitment to highlight the crisis of distracted driving in the United States. The group’s monthly newsletter, You Should Know, is devoted to the campaign to end distracted driving, and the newsletter’s featured story calls special attention to the dangers of multitasking on the road.
Perhaps the most compelling part of the April presentation is a 20-minute podcast interview with the attorney Joel Feldman, founder of the Casey Feldman Foundation and the EndDD web campaign. During the interview, host Steve Miller and Mr. Feldman discuss the current state of the campaign to end distracted driving, the Casey Feldman story, and practical strategies to reduce incidents of driving distracted.
Children model their parents’ behavior
During the interview, Mr. Feldman raises a point that is all too often neglected: the distracted-driving problem is assumed to be a behavior issue among young drivers who are too inexperienced to know better. But practical experience tells us otherwise. Young drivers are just mimicking the bad driving behavior of their parents, who should know better. “When we ask the kids — it doesn’t matter, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth grade, even college kids—when we ask them to raise their hands [to show] how many of their parents drive distracted, and with them in the car, virtually all of the hands go up in the room,” Feldman says. “So my feeling is that everyone talks about this as a youth problem … but it would be a big mistake to look on this as a youth problem. It’s everybody’s problem.”
Parents are models for their children’s behavior. We know from experience that teenagers imitate the behavior patterns of adults—good and bad habits alike. “Kids know what role models are,” Mr. Feldman observes. “You ask them about their parents—‘Were they good role models? Are they good role models for you in the car?’—and they say, ‘Well, no. Mom and Dad drive, Mom and Dad text, Dad will eat a hoagie and steer with both of his legs’ … Something’s gotta change.”
Prospects for positive change
There are some indications that change is coming, even if it’s more slowly than we would like. More and more, the topic is in the public consciousness. Some states are waking up to the issue and passing laws against distracted driving. When reporting on motor vehicle accidents, some newspapers and television news reports will now note whether distracted driving is suspected as a factor in the crash. High school driving safety programs now often include lessons devoted to distracted driving, to complement those on drunk driving, sleepy driving, and drugged driving.
Those efforts will continue. And the ongoing efforts of organizations such as EndDD, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and RULethal may spur reform through an unconventional role-model path: from child to parent. Our greatest successes so far have come in alerting young people to distracted driving dangers. Teenagers are becoming more confident in challenging the unsafe driving behaviors of their parents and other adults. If that trend can be sustained, we have set in place a pattern for positive change in the future.
