A road safety message from Sunshine 106.8.
Two seconds. That's roughly how long it takes to glance at a text message. At 100 kilometres an hour, in those two seconds your car travels around 55 metres — more than half the length of a football pitch — with your eyes off the road the entire time.
It's a fact that's easy to know and hard to really feel, because for most of us, checking a phone at the wheel has never gone wrong. We've done it a hundred times and arrived safely every time. But that track record doesn't tell you anything about the hundred-and-first time, and it's exactly why phone use behind the wheel remains one of the most persistent factors in Irish road collisions, year after year, despite everyone knowing the risk in theory.
It isn't just texting. It's glancing at a notification, checking directions, answering a call even hands-free when the conversation itself pulls your attention away from what's actually happening on the road in front of you. Research consistently shows that a phone conversation, even hands-free, measurably slows a driver's reaction time — because the distraction isn't really about your hands. It's about your attention.
The most effective fix is also the simplest: put the phone somewhere you genuinely can't reach it while driving — a bag in the back seat, the glovebox, on silent. If you're expecting an important call or message, pull in somewhere safe and legal to check it, rather than trying to manage it at speed.
Whatever is on that screen, it can wait the extra ten or fifteen minutes until you've arrived. The alternative — a collision caused by two seconds of distraction — cannot be undone anything like as easily, and it's a trade that almost never looks worthwhile once you actually weigh it up in those terms. The next time your phone buzzes at the wheel, it's worth remembering that whoever or whatever it is has already waited this long. A few more minutes will make no difference to them, and every difference to you and everyone else on the road around you.
A road safety message from Sunshine 106.8, funded by the news reporting scheme.