Soon, your doctor could add a new question to those “do you smoke or drink” types at every examination. One doctor is calling for physicians to get more involved in anti-distracted driving efforts by asking their patients if they use cell phones or text while driving.
Soon, your doctor could add a new question to those “do you smoke or drink” types at every examination. One doctor is calling for physicians to get more involved in anti-distracted driving efforts by asking their patients if they use cell phones or text while driving.
The doctor, Amy Ship, makes a case for doctors to get into the middle of anti-distracted driving efforts in this month’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. According to Dr. Ship, texting while driving and cell phone use while driving are a public health menace and therefore, there's definitely a need for physicians to get into the middle of this debate. According to her, the evidence against texting while driving is too large for doctors who care about public health to ignore. Motorists who text while driving have been found to be up to 23 times more likely to be involved in an accident. Earlier this year, the National Safety Council estimated that approximately 1.6 million of all auto accidents in the United States annually, involve texting or using cell phones while driving.
However, even Dr. Ship admits that doctors asking patients about their smoking or drinking doesn't seem to make much difference to whether the patients indulge in these behaviors. It's therefore likely that not much good is going to come of doctors questioning patients about their texting practices either. However, she still insists that doctors must ask these essential questions at least to raise awareness.
No California accident lawyer would object to doctors getting involved in anti-distracted driving efforts. Whether these work or not, we need as many voices raised against these distractions as we possibly can. Being bombarded with the same message from all angles could possibly make a difference.
In any case, texting while driving is not exactly pleasurable behavior in the same manner that smoking or drinking is. Therefore, there is reason to hope that when doctors sternly lecture patients about their texting while driving practices, it could goad them to stop.
