Maybe it’s akin to days when people accepted a sympathetic cop pulling over a teen who had too much to drink, telling the youngster to go slow, drive the few blocks home and stay off the road the next time.
Those days — amid many publicized deaths — are, of course, long gone.
Now, cell phone use and text messaging in particular have replaced driving under the influence as a toxic mix, with a new lexicon known as driving while distracted.
18- to 20-year-olds are four times as likely to be involved in a distraction-related crash than someone at least 35, reports the Arbella Insurance Group.
In 2008, nearly 6,000 people in America died in crashes involving distractions, and more than a half-million were injured.
Arbella’s charitable foundation spent $500,000 and two years in concert with the University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers developing a simulated program that mimics real-life driving, officials said. It’s aimed at [...]

Original post by Michael Holtzman