By Mallory Sherwood, Staff Writer
In 11 days, ACU’s campus will appear deserted.
Most of the 5,800 students, faculty and staff will be finished attending and teaching classes, and students will have departed to enjoy the one-month Christmas break.
If statistics are correct, though, nearly 4,020 deaths will result from crash-related accidents nationwide during the holiday season between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day because of driver fatigue, speeding and cell phone use, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
“You don’t want to be that statistic,” said Jimmy Ellison, chief of ACU police. “Every year, every holiday travel season there are tragic accidents, like the Easter tragedy with the Nigerian students in 2002. There are some people who think it won’t happen to them or to ACU students. It did, and it can.”
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death in drivers between the ages of 15 and 20, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Last year, a crash-related injury occurred every five seconds and a crash-related death every 12 minutes on average during the holiday season, said Jeffrey Runge, administrator of the NHTSA on the NHTSA Web site.
This holiday, students are encouraged to drive safely and avoid accidents that could be prevented.
“It is important to realize that the highways are flooded with travelers during the holidays,” Ellison said. “You’re leaving in a rush, anxious to get off campus and to leave ACU in your rearview mirror, and you just rush, rush, rush. To tell you the truth, stopping every couple of hours to get a Coke is not going to ruin your great time, and it will make you so much safer.”
He also said that college students get into the habit of staying up all night to write research papers and to study. They think that they will be able to drive all night but find that driver fatigue is a risk factor for them.
“It’s not like you are driving along and all of the sudden you get sleepy and realize you should pull over,” Ellison said. “It kind of sneaks up on you, and you don’t realize that you are fatigued until you swerve off of the road and scare yourself awake.”
Fatigue doesn’t just happen to drivers during the night, though. Most fatal crashes happen on Fridays and Saturdays between 3 p.m. and midnight, according to the National Center for Statistics and Analysis. This is when many students leave college campuses to head home.
Another factor to consider is cell phone use while driving.
Today, 171 million people in America have a cell phone, according to an industry trade group, CTIA, that conducts research for the Wireless Association. People who use cell phones while driving are four times more likely to have a crash than drivers who don’t talk and drive, according to the Texas Department of Transportation.
