Death can come in seconds

Millions of iPhones and BlackBerrys are being used every second, and few adults in Nassau County are without a cell phone of some kind. These devices enable more than phone calls. We can type text messages, read e-mails, connect to the Internet and type Twitter messages and Facebook updates. We can find out where the nearest pizzeria, gas station or hospital is. We can check the weather. We can get a movie review, find the closest theater where that movie is playing and when the next show starts, and then get directions to the theater. All on the phone.

These advances in technology are breathtaking. If used at the wrong time, however, they can also be life-taking.

A few years ago we banned driving while talking on a phone without using a hands-free device. Now it’s texting while driving that’s shunned, and we’re also seeing the perils of using the phone’s navigation, Internet, calorie-counting, sports-scoreboard, calendar and stock-ticker applications while driving.

Driving is dangerous enough when we’re focused on doing it carefully. A several-thousand-pound vehicle moving at 60 mph hits stationary objects with a crushing force. Ask any EMT. Sixty miles per hour is 88 feet per second. If a driver looks away from the road for just three seconds to type a text message, he or she has driven 264 feet — the distance on a football field from the goal line to the opposite 12-yard-line. Even at a school zone’s 20 mph, a car travels 10 yards in three seconds, easily enough distance for a child to run into the street unseen.

There is nothing new about warnings against taking your eyes off the road while driving. What is new is the number of distractions in our lives, the activities with which we seem to fill every moment of our day. We try so hard to stay connected and to multitask. Sometimes, however, we must stay focused on one thing alone, and driving is one of those activities that calls for our full and undivided attention.