Distracted driving week in full speed

By Meaghan Bury

BELLEVILLE – The OPP has launched its annual distracted driving campaign which runs from March 14 to 20.

The OPP says that 2015 was the third consecutive year that distracted driving was the number one factor in road deaths on roads patrolled by OPP.

Central Hastings community services officer, Const. Alana Deubel, says she knows people have busy lives and that they believe they can multitask on the roadways. But Deubel wants to remind everyone to focus on driving and to pull over to conduct other tasks.

“Even though people think they can do other things whether it’s answer a call or text, even things like eating or handing things to passengers or other occupants of the vehicle, when they do that their focus is now on that new task and it is away from driving,” she said.

Each year for the past three years OPP officers have laid approximately 20,000 distracted driving charges in Ontario which is more than double the number of impaired driving charges that were laid over the same three year period.

According to a release from OPP, last year 69 people died in road crashes where distracted driving was a factor compared to 61 speed-related, 51 seat belt-related and 45 relating to drugs or alcohol.

“People need to start to recognize that driving is a very important task. You’re operating a vehicle at a high rate of speed and there’s all kinds of things on the roadway you need to be focusing in on and that’s an important enough task that all your focus should be on that and we need to slow down a little bit and make that a priority,” said Deubel.

The OPP encourages passengers to have a zero tolerance approach to distracted driving and to take charge of their safety and speak up if they are being driven in a vehicle where the driver is not paying full attention to the road.