Health and Safety Duty



One of my distractions for the last 20 years of my life.

I often wonder why I'm still hanging in there when most Dads and Moms seem to find the exit when their son's achieve Eagle Scout... I think somebody forgot to give me the map! I just keep going back for more.

Those of us who've been around for a while and have found an extended family in the program know why we can't step away. We know you can't take the paychecks to the bank, you put them in a far safer place, a place where no one can ever take them from you. You can lose your money and your possessions, but your memories, like your knowledge and your dreams can never be taken from you.

One of my many Scouting hats allows me the opportunity to help our Council have safe camps and programs for everyone who participates and uses our facilities. Here is my latest article for our monthly leaders newsletter:

Health Safety & Risk Management

February 2010

DISTRACTED DRIVING
Your passenger’s health and safety... their very lives are in your hands when you are behind the wheel… understood?


Wikipedia.org Defines Distracted Driving As:

Distracted driving, a replacement title for the more popular terms "texting while driving" and "talking while driving", is the what occurs when a driver has something other than driving on his mind.[1] Driving becomes subsequent in importance to another activity that is happening inside the car, truck or cycle while the vehicle is in motion.


All areas of our Council are covered by some form of law that either restricts or forbids the drivers use of electronic communications. Do you know what they are and how they differ between Indiana and Kentucky? There are numerous resources that you can turn to find the specifics but the simplest thing to do is simply turn it off before you get behind the wheel.

Think about it, there are enough distractions inherent in the act of piloting a motor vehicle not to mention adding passengers and, in our case, many times they are excited Scouts and Scouters who are on the way to or from that “big adventure” we don’t need to add talking, texting or reading electronic minutia to the mix.

Think about it, it’s never OK! Never fool yourself, the laws of physics are hard and unbending, they apply to all of us, and they never take a day off. We found the following startling finding:

“Texting drivers took their eyes off the forward roadway for an average of 4.6 seconds during the 6-second interval surrounding a safety-critical event. At 55 mph (or 80.7 feet per second), this equates to a driver traveling 371 feet, the approximate length of a football field, including the end zones, without looking at the roadway. At 65 mph (or 95.3 feet per second), the driver would have traveled approximately 439 feet without looking at the roadway.”

We encourage you spend some time at http://distraction.gov/ you’ll find a wealth of information, like the fact above, that will convince you to turn it off until you take a break from driving or if you already do, it will give you ideas you can use to convince your friends to do it too!