JSU students learn that texting and driving can kill

Diamond Jenkins
Staff Writer

Jackson State University students learned first hand the perils of texting and driving during the Distracted Driving’ Tour held in the Student Center on Oct. 6.

The tour is a new educational program touring college campus in states including Arkansas, Alabama, and Tennessee which gives participants real life experiences of what happens when drivers use cell phones and other technologies while driving.

“It is important that new, young drivers and elected officials, safety advocates, law enforcement representatives, academics and other leaders come together to discuss the growing safety impacts of distracted driving and share strategies for effectively addressing it,” said Oscar Levi, Distracted Driving tour manager “It only takes one second to crash a car because it is only a natural reaction to swerve.”

JSU students participated in a simulated road test, which challenged their ability to multitask by texting and responding to a text message every 10 seconds, while driving at a speed of 25 mph.

Sycreis Wilson, a freshman accounting major from  Pascagoula, Miss. said, “I felt like it was a real life experience though I wasn’t driving and I think it showed that texting and driving is very dangerous.”

According to Distraction.gov website, 20 percent of injury crashes in 2009 involved reports of distracted driving.  In 2009, 5,474 people were killed in U.S. roadways and an estimated additional 448,000 were injured in motor vehicle crashes that were reported to have involved distracted driving.

Dr. Melvin Davis from the Mississippi Urban Research Center along with his team are working together to find ways to prevent distracted driving from becoming a deadly epidemic on our roads and transportation systems.

A telephone survey was conducted in Hinds, Madison and Rankin counties on driver distraction and its implications for driver safety. The Mississippi Urban Research Center (MURC), an entity of Jackson State University (JSU), uses multidisciplinary approaches and diverse research methods to provide a structure and setting for conducting research, analyzing public policies and managing research data. It serves as a clearinghouse for dissemination of research data on pressing urban life issues in the areas of health, crime and violence, alcohol and other drug abuse, urban education and urban policy.