Personal Health: Keeping Eyes on Distracted Driving’s Toll

? Reprogrammed your GPS device?

? Retrieved something you or a child dropped?

? Searched for a particular CD?

? Put on makeup or shaved?

? Struggled to open a package of nuts or chips?

Perhaps you never have texted or talked on a cellphone while operating a motor vehicle. But if you engaged in any of the above activities, you are just as guilty of distracted driving as if you had.

It’s easy to become complacent. Maybe you’re a good driver, and you’ve gotten away with such actions for years. Maybe you managed to avert a near-accident when your attention returned to the road in the nick of time. But one of these days, your luck may run out and you, or someone you hit, could be maimed for life or dead.

“Driving while distracted is roughly equivalent to driving drunk,” Dr. Amy N. Ship, an internist at Harvard Medical School, wrote last year in a commentary in The New England Journal of Medicine. “Any activity that distracts a driver visually or cognitively increases the risk of an accident. None of them is safe.”

Following widespread publicity about the hazards of distracted driving, including a Pulitzer-prize winning series in this newspaper, medical groups are working hard to make patients more aware of the problem. The most recent effort was started last week by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Orthopaedic Trauma Association, whose “Decide to Drive” campaign calls attention to the increasing number of distractions engaged in by multitasking drivers and the resulting toll on people’s lives.

“We take care of a lot of people injured in car accidents, and distracted driving is a substantial contributor to these accidents,” Dr. Daniel Berry, president of the academy, said in an interview. “If we could get rid of this part of our practice, it would be a great service to the people we care for.”

Orthopedists would do very well, thank you, without the business generated by the 307,369 crashes that have occurred so far this year, according to estimates from the National Safety Council, involving drivers talking on cellphones or texting.

Last year Aaron Brookens of Beloit, Wis., then 19, was driving home at 75 miles an hour after spending a weekend with his girlfriend when he decided to send her a text message — and wound up pinned under a semi. The toll: two broken femurs, a broken kneecap and ankle, nerve damage to both legs, and a lacerated spleen, kidney and liver.

Numerous operations and a lengthy rehab later, Mr. Brookens knows he’s lucky to be alive. “No one thinks it will happen to them,” he said on Wednesday at a news conference convened by the orthopedists. He now realizes that “deciding to drive” is always the best option, and he wants others to learn from his mistake.

“We don’t expect our campaign to change everyone’s behavior overnight,” Dr. Berry said. “It took a lot of years to get the message across about using seat belts or driving drunk. We’re adding our voice to those of others — the more jungle drums, the better.”

Among those beating the drums are the parents of Eric Okerblom, a 19-year-old college student who was struck by a car and killed in 2009 while cycling near his home in Santa Maria, Calif.; the driver, a teenager, was traveling 60 m.p.h. while texting on her cellphone. His father, Bob Okerblom, is now on a cross-country bike ride, blogging along the way in order to spread the word about distracted driving.

Last November, the transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, introduced a Web site called “Faces of Distracted Driving” (distraction.gov/faces) that explores the cost these behaviors inflict on families and communities. “Distracted driving has become a deadly epidemic on America’s roads,” said Mr. LaHood, who urges bans on drivers texting and using phones or other devices.

At the news briefing, Dr. Andrew Pollak, president of the trauma association, said: “It isn’t just cellphones. It’s anything that takes our attention from the task of driving.”

David L. Strickland, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, added: “No one does multitasking well.”

The orthopedists’ campaign will try to raise the national consciousness and change future driving behavior by taking their message to schoolchildren, especially those in grades 5 through 8, who may discourage their parents and siblings from driving distracted and refrain themselves when they become drivers.

Statistics and Studies