A Picture is Worth Just Four Words: Don’t Drive While Distracted
We all love taking pictures of memorable experiences — amidst a beautiful vista, in front of a priceless piece of artwork, while at a ballgame or during a family gathering. Cameras and phones are now outfitted with the ability to turn the camera on ourselves, giving rise to the selfie generation. But, the selfie trend has now found its way into the most mundane of activities: driving.
Several recent drivers trying to capture this “picture-worthy” experience have also documented the frightening consequences. The selfie while driving trend joins texting while driving and talking on cell phone while driving on the list of distracted behavior that can contribute to serious crashes.
Jeep Slams into Canoe Caught on Selfie Video
A man was too busy looking at this camera while shooting video to notice the truck in front of him had a canoe dangling out the back. The viral video caught the man slamming into the canoe, which shattered his windshield. Miraculously, nobody appears injured.
Driver Pops into Selfie Before Running into Tree
In an accident in Maine last week, a 29 year-old driver ran head-on into a tree while leaning over to join the selfie being snapped by his passenger. Four of his seven passengers suffered injuries, including a fractured nose and back and neck injuries. The driver was cited for his distracted driving.
Driver Killed Snapping Selfies to Post to Facebook
Last year, a driver died while taking selfies. The 32 year-old woman posted her last selfie to her Facebook page moments before she fatally crashed her car. She updated her status to, “The happy song makes me HAPPY,” at 8:33 a.m. police received a call about the accident at 8:34 a.m.
Is Selfie While Driving a Dangerous Trend?
Adweek estimated that in 2014 more than 1 million selfies were taken daily. The trend is most popular amongst the 18 to 24 year old age bracket, the same group who face highest risks of auto accidents. But of course, people of all ages take selfies, and doing so while driving at any age is dangerous.
Yet, the Instagram hashtags #drivingselfie, #drivingselfies, #drivingtowork and #Ihopeidontcrash contain thousands of selfies of people driving. Twitter also has hundreds of images for the search term “driving selfie.”
We urge drivers to put the cameras away and save their photo perfect moment for when they arrive at their destination.