How Dangerous Is Texting While Driving?

Back in October the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) released a study in which 200 commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers, aka truck drivers, covered 3 million miles, and found that drivers are 23.2 times as likely to be involved in a "safety critical" event while texting than if not.

The report found that texting drivers took their eyes off the road for an average of 4.6 seconds before such an event took place, and thus traveled the length of a football field, including the endzones, without looking at the road (at 55 mph that's 371 feet).

While we all know texting while driving is obviously a hazard, this puts some concrete numbers to just exactly how bad it is.

Here's the link from FMCSA (PDF).