The notion of a Twitter Social Mobile Crash is not a metaphor. I don’t mean to imply Twitter no longer dominates as the pre-eminent social media on the mobile platform–they certainly do. In fact, according to a Crowd Science survey, 41% of Twitter users contact friends via social media rather than by phone. And 11% of Twitter users admitted to tweeting while driving during the previous thirty days. And that is probably a lowball number.
Unfortunately, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute released a different study back in July that showed texting while driving makes you twenty-three times more likely to crash.
Do that math: twenty-three freaking times more likely to crash…
We gotta put these things down, hard as that may be. And I’ll admit, I’m guilty. I’ve done it. I’ve texted and tweeted while steering with my knees. But by any rational measure, that’s idiotic behavior. Adding another comment on Amp Energy Drink’s boneheaded iPhone app doesn’t quite seem worth creasing a quarter panel of sheet metal…or worse.
So while the inevitable Twitter Social Mobile Crashes have already come and will keep coming, I’ll make you a deal: I won’t tweet behind the wheel if you won’t. That way, we won’t have to meet on the shattered glass of an accident scene or the grim lighting in the emergency room; we can meet the way the web intended–virtually, with goofy assumed names and offbeat links.