At any given daylight moment, about 660,000 Americans are using a cellphone or other electronic device while driving.
That’s according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Each day in the U.S., more than nine people are killed and nearly 1,200 are injured in vehicle accidents involving a distracted driver, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On the local level, many traffic mishaps involving distracted drivers are occurring between private vehicles and buses operated by the Jacksonville Transportation Authority.
From February through July, 121 collisions occurred with buses, many attributable to distracted driving. That’s a significant increase from 78 incidents reported in the same period in 2014, said JTA spokeswoman Leigh Ann Rassler.
“We had one Tuesday morning,” she said. “Somebody bumped into the back of a bus.”
The authority provides 2,000 bus hours of service daily along 34 routes. Buses cover 9 million miles each year and often are stopped in the travel lanes of busy streets to pick up and drop off passengers.
That makes a bus a prime target for a driver who isn’t paying complete attention to what’s in front of their vehicle.
In an effort to reduce the number of mishaps between distracted motorists and buses, JTA commissioned a local marketing firm to develop a social media campaign to make people aware of the danger associated with distracted driving.
The campaign also will encourage motorists to pay attention to driving instead of their cellphones.
John Ream, president of The Connect Agency, said social media was selected as the best way to reach people who might be prone to texting while driving.
Statistics published by the CDC in the 2013 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey indicated 31 percent of drivers ages 18-64 surveyed said they had read or sent text or email messages at least once in the 30 days before they were surveyed.
Drivers under the age of 20 accounted for 27 percent of drivers involved in fatal crashes; 10 percent were reported to be distracted at the time of the accident.
The survey also determined nearly half of U.S. high school students age 16 and older text or email while driving.
“Younger people are more likely to be using a mobile device to text or email while driving,” Ream said.
Once the target market for the campaign was identified, the next step was to develop the message, he said.
After analyzing other “social change campaigns,” it was decided to forego the scare-tactic approach, such as that used by anti-smoking campaigns. Even one of the major wireless providers has fielded an anti-distracted driving program based on the “fear factor,” he said.
That’s why “Pocket Pledge: Keep it in your pocket,” JTA’s campaign, takes a more humorous approach to the public safety issue.
“Statistics don’t work. The idea was to create a visual component that social promoters would post to their followers,” Ream said.
When it came time to launch the campaign in November, the agency identified the top 15 “social influencers” in Jacksonville, said Stephen Freeman, who manages the JTA account.
The group, which has nearly 80,000 followers on Twitter and other social media platforms, were invited to a lunch-and-learn at JTA headquarters, where the campaign was explained. Their help was enlisted to spread the message and drive their followers to a website where they can declare their intention to avoid distracted driving.
Nearly 100 people went to pocketpledge.com and signed up to keep their mobile device in their pocket while driving after the social media roll-out began, Freeman said.
The next step was a partnership with Arlington Toyota. Ream said 2,500 mirror-hangers are being placed in vehicles sold or serviced at the dealership. Arlington Toyota also placed the pocket pledge message in their radio spots and in public service announcements.
The third phase is to involve some of Jacksonville’s major employers in spreading the message to their workforces.
Ream said Downtown companies would be prime candidates, since most of their workers commute between their homes and their jobs.
“For this to grow, we have to first drive awareness, then get people to encourage their friends to take the pledge,” he said.
@DRMaxDowntown
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