{"id":976,"date":"2017-11-11T19:45:53","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T16:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/?p=976"},"modified":"2017-11-27T22:14:20","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T19:14:20","slug":"texting-while-driving-the-latest-from-dearborn-police-chief-ron-haddad-and-dearborn-fire-chief-joseph-murray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/texting-while-driving-the-latest-from-dearborn-police-chief-ron-haddad-and-dearborn-fire-chief-joseph-murray\/","title":{"rendered":"Texting while driving: the latest from Dearborn Police Chief Ron Haddad and Dearborn Fire Chief Joseph Murray"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Do not use your phone when driving!!\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nGueQbpMkGc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h6><strong>It is a problem, a HUGE problem! Texting while driving is getting worse and according to the National Safety Council cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year. Texting while driving is 6x more likely to cause an accident than driving drunk. On the positive side, our society is aware and 94% of drivers support a ban on texting while driving. We spoke with Dearborn\u2019s two leading public safety officers about the issue\u2026<\/strong><\/h6>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>By Stephen Coats and Rasheed AlNozili<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\nThe Yemeni American News<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_979\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-979\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-979\" src=\"http:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/11\/DSC_0089-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/11\/DSC_0089-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/11\/DSC_0089-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/11\/DSC_0089.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-979\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><em>Ron Haddad, Dearborn Police Chief<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Ron Haddad, Dearborn Police Chief said, \u201cTexting and driving continues to be a major contribution to accidents in our city, over 40% of all accidents are rear end collisions which means people are not paying attention and following too close. Our critical accidents are up 12% year-to-date and our arrests of people that are driving carelessly out there continue to escalate.\u201d<br \/>\nAccording to Dearborn Fire Chief Joseph Murray, \u201cI tell people all the time, driving is one of the most dangerous parts of our jobs as firefighters it\u2019s always in the top three reasons why firefighters are killed every year is through some type of traffic incident. So for us it\u2019s a real big issue.\u201d<br \/>\nHe adds \u201cpeople are not keeping as much focus as they should be on the road and getting distracted and for us that\u2019s problematic because then every day when we\u2019re driving we have our sirens on, we have our lights on, everything\u2019s going like we are supposed to have and people are still not seeing us because they\u2019re looking down at their phone or they\u2019re not hearing us because the radios too loud. I\u2019ve even seen people watching videos on their phone while they\u2019re driving. And that is just not a safe situation.\u201d<br \/>\nWhen Chief Haddad was asked on what the community can do about this very important issue, he said \u201cespecially with parents that give young people vehicles to drive I would recommend that parents really go over the rules with their young people and not provide them with phones and tell him to stay off their phones and off their text messaging while driving. I think that\u2019s so important that parents take an active role in letting their kids know.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_980\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-980\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-980\" src=\"http:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/11\/Joseph-Murray-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/11\/Joseph-Murray-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/11\/Joseph-Murray-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/11\/Joseph-Murray-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/11\/Joseph-Murray.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-980\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Joseph Murray, Dearborn Fire Chief<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<p>Fire Chief Murray tells us with respect to firemen and firewomen seeing this on the road \u201ca lot of times we\u2019ll be driving up and expecting a person to pull over to the right and they don\u2019t do it because they\u2019re distracted and that puts us in a dangerous situation and it also puts the other people driving on the street in a danger situation because what typically happens is someone\u2019s texting and all of a sudden they realize there\u2019s an emergency vehicle behind them and they freak out and they just pull the car to one side or the other real rapidly not really paying attention.\u201d<br \/>\nHe then says \u201cif we\u2019re driving up to someone who\u2019s distracted and not being able to move to the side of the road for us, it delays our response. We have to slow down, provide a safe distance and wait for that person to move over in a safe manner. If they\u2019re not moving in a safe manner we will move ourselves to try to go around them but that also increases the danger to our responders and the people on the road so we try not to go in the wrong lane if we can avoid it but sometimes people are so distracted we have to do it just to be able to get to people.\u201d<br \/>\nThe Yemeni American News staff asked if there are cameras discovering texting and driving. Chief Haddad responded \u201cWe have several intersections that are wired up with cameras but it\u2019s not an efficient way to know whether somebody is texting and driving. I can tell you that you can pull up to any stop sign or any traffic signal you can look in the car next to you and they got their heads down texting. It\u2019s really an addiction of our current society and I think that the more we do that the more you are going to have people injured and so we have to work on it from a holistic point of view. Everyone has to be giving out the same message and it\u2019s more than a slogan, don\u2019t text and drive!\u201d<br \/>\nWhen asked about how the Fire and Police Department are welcoming new immigrants and informing them of the city\u2019s regulations, Chief Murray said \u201cMy first recommendation is to not be texting at all when you\u2019re driving. Get a hands free device if anything. It delays the ambulance to treat somebody because we can\u2019t get there as fast. Don\u2019t text don\u2019t watch videos.\u201d<br \/>\nHe mentioned that cars today are built to be quiet; and they\u2019re built to be soundproof. He adds that when people have their radios loud and the windows are closed a lot of times it kind of muffles their sirens.<br \/>\nChief Murray ends his answer with \u201cPeople have to be extra vigilant on what\u2019s going on around them. Checking their mirrors and understanding what\u2019s going on in the roadway and not looking at their phones.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class='clear '><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is a problem, a HUGE problem! Texting while driving is getting worse and according to the National Safety Council cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year. Texting while driving is 6x more likely to cause an accident than driving drunk. On the positive side, our society is aware and [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1135,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/1135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}