When you see a distracted driver, you may feel frustrated and nervous. Maybe you know how dangerous it is, and you don’t understand why other drivers keep doing it. Every driver who is looking down at their phone could potentially cause an accident that leads to severe injuries for you or anyone else in your car.
Part of the problem is that many drivers may suffer from some form of cellphone addiction. Even if it is not technically an addiction, it may be a use disorder. Either way, they have been conditioned to use their phone, and they can’t break that conditioning even when they are in the car and they know that it’s dangerous.
This is done intentionally
In some cases, it is certainly the drivers who are at fault. If someone gets a phone call while they’re in the car, they should just wait to answer the phone until they reach their destination. But some people are impatient, or they may think that they can multitask – which is a myth – so they’ll just decide to try to talk on the phone while they drive.
But in other cases, the addiction may be far more intentional. With many apps, the only form of funding that the app developer gets comes from advertisements. This means that they literally make more money if they can keep people on those platforms for as long as possible. They have a financial incentive to send drivers notifications or take other steps to make their apps as addictive as they can.
As such, even a driver who knows that distraction is dangerous may be manipulated by the device so that they engage in distracted driving. If they cause an accident and you suffer life-changing injuries like a spinal cord injury or a traumatic brain injury, you may be able to seek financial compensation for medical bills, lost wages and many other costs.
