The Lubbock City Council met with Lubbock Police, DPS, and other local law enforcement at City Hall Thursday morning to announce that Lubbock is joining the nation-wide campaign “It Can Wait”.
They gave KLBK and EverythingLubbock.com access to the AT&T Distracted Driving Simulator to show how important it is.
“It’s about awareness and education right now,” Mayor Dan Pope said. “That’s where we are. I don’t know if you can legislate it away. It’s about people paying attention to what you’re doing and realizing what they do has an impact on everyone else on the road.”
Pope said with kids going back to school soon, it’s important to show this attention now.
“Talking on your cell phone and talking to passengers in your car, changing music, some of you looking for a cassette to put in your cassette deck,” Pope said. “Eating and drinking, you know, reading a map, reading your navigation system, video, posting a video, it goes on and on those items contribute.”
LPD’s Chief Greg Stevens said in 2015, 105,783 crashes nationwide were caused because of other distractions in the car, 422 of those resulted in fatalities. He said these were just the ones they could identify.
Stevens said compared to the state and national average, Lubbock has a lower rate of accidents caused by distracted driving.
“In 2015, 855 crashes were due to distracted drivers,” Stevens said. “One of those resulted in a fatality and one in an incapacitated injury. And 37 of those were specifically identified as the cell phone as the distraction.”
Stevens said the top distraction that they’ve seen is other passengers in the car. The next: driver’s using their cell phone while driving.
Stevens said setting the right example of how to operate a vehicle is the best way to lower the statistic.
“Just drive, just drive the car,” Stevens said. “Stop messing with everything on the dashboard. It’s more than just the cell phone.
To watch the Driver Simulator AT&T app, you can find it at ItCanWait.com/VR