Just don’t look, no matter how often the smart phone buzzes or beeps: trauma surgeons warn motorists before the seconds-long distraction by cell phone use at the wheel. “At the speed of 50 km/h in city traffic, the 3 seconds takes a long time to Check a SMS to about 42 meters of travel, without the perception of the Traffic situation”, reckoned the German society for Orthopaedics and trauma surgery (DGOU) in a published on Monday message.
At a speed of 120 on the motorway, drivers were even 100 meters flying blind. Many of the injuries that the experts would see in the emergency rooms, decreased accidents, inattentive drivers, it said.
The trauma surgeons therefore advise “urgently, the car, the mobile phone put aside”. Distracted road users might react to other vehicles on pedestrian or obstacles. Also on the bike or E-Scooter or as a pedestrian in the view of the mobile phone could cost crucial seconds, “the decide about life or death,” it said.
The highest accident risk in road transport would transport participants between the ages of 18 and 24 years, explained to the society and relied on data from the Federal Statistical office: in 2018, were killed in an accident in Germany, almost 61,000 people from this age group, of which 369 fatal.
