This goes along nicely with the multitude of videos from Russia that we post; you know, those crashes when it appears as if the driver isn’t paying attention, and either wonders straight through a red light and into the path of oncoming traffic, or simply does something very dumb, like run over a bus stop in an intersection.

Distracted driving is to blame, says a study commissioned by organizations that are looking out for road safety in the US.

It relies on information taken from 118 intersections that were analyzed over a period of three months through their video feeds. After compiling the data, it was noted that around 12 percent of these red light offenses could be attributed to distracted driving, at least within the 19 communities where the intersections were located.

However, the figures were then used to get an estimate of how many that would mean for one year on a national level, and we get 7,336,696 such violations for 2012 alone. Also, regarding mobile phones, it is again guessed that somewhere around 21 percent of all crashes are in some way linked to their use, as they make drivers a claimed four times more likely to slip up.

By Andrei Nedelea

Story References: NCSR via Autoblog.com

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