Simulator at Fair in Kittitas County mimics texting and drunk driving

A friend sent me a link to this article from the Daily Record a newspaper from the Eastern side of the Pass. Apparently at the Kittitas County Fair there was a DUI and texting while driving simulator booth using 4D glasses taking drivers through a one mile, three minute course along the cityscape and the beach. This booth was put on by the Kittitas County Fair and State Farm Insurance company. Sounds pretty cool, huh?

The booth was open to any virtual drivers aged 14 and over. The purpose of the booth was to give people an idea of what it is like to be impaired and to drive and or text while driving. By showing them the dangers of this hopefully it would allow the participants to make better choices when it comes to these decisions.

What I found interesting from the article is it sounded like those who participated in the texting while driving simulator had more issues than those who were driving while supposedly impaired. This kind of goes along with some of the studies the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have put out.

Just to give you an idea of the dangers of texting while driving. NHTSA the federal agency cited above reports that sending or receiving a text takes a driver’s eyes from the road for an average of 4.6 seconds, the equivalent — when traveling at 55 mph — of driving the length of an entire football field while blindfolded. In fact texting while driving causes over 3,000 deaths and 330,000 injuries per year, according to a Harvard Center for Risk Analysis study.

Texting while driving in a vehicle has now replaced drinking while driving as the leading cause of accidents and deaths of teenage drivers. Let me repeat that. Texting while driving causes more deaths and accidents than DUI among teenage drivers. Exactly what the booth in Kittitas County showed. It’s amazing how a real life experiment such as this booth will accurately portray the more dangerous activity.

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The Author: Matthew Leyba is a Criminal Defense Attorney located in Bellevue and Seattle, WA. His practice focuses on representing those charged with DUI. He has recently been named a Rising Star in the field of DUI Defense, and is rated as a Top DUI Attorney by Avvo and several other publications.