Put your phone away and be patient while driving in Colorado

    Over the past two months, I’ve talked about crashes over the 2018 holiday season which took nine lives in seven crashes over a 72-hour period. We touched on the topic of mixing drinking, drugs and driving. Now let’s look at two of the most common ones we deal with every day: distracted driving and aggressive driving.
    Driving a vehicle is an important endeavor. I think too often drivers become complacent with this task. Anytime a driver diverts their attention from watching the road or the surrounding area, there is a greater potential for disaster.
    It comes down to a simple rule: there is no good time to be messing with your phone or anything else in the car when it’s moving. That quick moment taken to tune the radio, or grab the burger you just picked up at the drive-thru is often just enough to miss something important.
    At just 45 mph, you are traveling at approximately 66 feet per second. That goes up to 88 feet per second when traveling 60 mph.  That is a large distance to be driving with the equivalency of having your eyes closed. Too often, we believe since nothing bad happened the last time, it won’t happen this time. So when things go as we expect them, we are prone to becoming complacent. With complacency, comes the possibility of dire consequences. This means watch the roads and the people around you at all times so we won’t have crashes that were preventable.

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