It's About Time We Focused on Distracted Driving

Travis: Hey there. I'm Travis Patterson, and welcome to Driving Change. Here, you're gonna find unfiltered insights and hard hitting questions that challenge the status quo in law and in life. As a personal injury lawyer in Fort Worth, Texas, I see firsthand how challenges like distracted driving and family safety issues impact our community. But I refuse to accept problems as inevitable.

In this podcast, we're gonna dig deep into real world problems, bringing you practical solutions from my experiences in law and parenting and entrepreneurship. I'm not here to preach. I'm here to start conversations that make you think differently and provide actionable advice that you can use right away. Welcome to Driving Change. Let's get to it.

Alright, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Driving Change, the Driving Change podcast. I'm super excited today. Have a very special guest. A friend of mine, actually kind of a hero of mine, a mentor of mine, Joel Feldman.

Joel is I think he's my only friend in Pennsylvania actually. But Joel Feldman, he's great. He's been a lawyer for forty years. I've got your bio here, Joel. I'm gonna read a little bit about your story here because it's it's truly incredible.

He's been a personal injury lawyer for about forty years. Did kind of the same work that I do here in Texas. But Joel had tragedy strike his family back in 2009 when his daughter Casey was killed by a distracted driver. This is when Casey was 21 years old. In fact, I was 22 years old, Joel, when this happened.

And think, you know, we'll talk about that here in a little bit. I think this is one of the reasons why your story has resonated with me so much through the years. But since Casey's death, Joel has worked tirelessly to keep all of us safe across the country on the roads through the formation of undistracted driving or NDD, which you will hear us refer to it as. Joel has personally given over 1,000 distracted driving presentations across the country to businesses, safety conferences, schools, anybody that will have Joel. Joel will show up for free and talk to to the audience about distracted driving and will save lives.

This presentation that he's built was done with the help of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. It's been studied by the US Department of Transportation. They have deemed it to be a very highly effective presentation. It is evidence based. It is scientifically guided.

It's interactive. It gets the students talking. It speaks to them on their level. It's just a very persuasive and powerful presentation. I've had the honor of giving this presentation that Joel and his team built, I think, seven times now, Joel.

Joel always gets on to me because I'm not good at keeping track of this kind of stuff, and and he's always saying we gotta we gotta write this stuff down. But I've done it six or seven times to a couple thousand kids around Texas, and it's just been remarkable. It's very effective. I've done some very unscientific surveys after these presentations, and about ninety two percent of the students say they are way less likely to drive distracted after seeing the presentation. So huge credit to Joel.

Joel's got about a 100 or so volunteers across the country doing these presentations. So I'm just one of many helping Joel out. The organization has talked to over 500,000 students across the country. Is that right, Joel?

Joel Feldman: Yes. 535,000, the last count.

Travis: Wow. Look to see how I'm done. This is what I said. They they keep track of all this stuff. He's on national boards, national committees on distracted driving.

He is the tip of the spear on this issue in our country. So I'm super excited to get into it with him. Joel, thanks for coming on the show.

Joel Feldman: Well, Travis, thanks for having me. It's been a couple months since I was down there, and we we hung out, and we spoke with those kids in the Dallas area.

Travis: Yeah. That's right. That's right. Another deal. So Joe, last year, I did a presentation at a school, and CBS came with us, and they did a they put it on the news.

And then Dallas ISD reached out and said, hey, we've got 22 schools. Will you come to all of them? And I called Joel. I was like, how am I gonna do this? I can't be in 22 schools.

So Joel flew down and hit up a couple of schools, and we put together a group of lawyers to tackle as many of these schools as we could in the time that we were allotted. But, yeah, it was good seeing you in Texas, Joel, seeing you in person. You were were wearing pink that day, I remember distinctly, and you're looks like you're wearing pink now. Tell folks why you wear pink all the time.

Joel Feldman: I wear pink whenever I do talks, whenever I do anything related to distracted driving, because pink was my daughter Casey's favorite color. There are many things we do to remember Casey, but that's just one thing I do. It makes me feel connected. And also, pink water bottle.

Travis: Pink water bottle.

Joel Feldman: Love Pink water bottle. Yeah.

Travis: Alright. So tell let's let's start with Casey. Tell us about Casey, about who she was, what she was into, and just the kind of future she had. Of course, I didn't know her personally, but I've I've I've learned her her story a lot. But, yeah, talk about your daughter.

Joel Feldman: Well, Casey Casey was my oldest child. I I will tell people today that I have two children, but only one is still living. As you said, Casey was killed by a distracted driver back in 2009. Just briefly, the facts were she was walking to her summer job. She had a summer job at the New Jersey Beach.

She wanted a fun summer between her junior and senior years of college in New York City and she was walking to her job, it was a beautiful summer day, she was about three quarters way through the intersection and a 58 year old man, not a kid, a 58 year old man was distracted by his GPS. He looked away from the road, he rolled through a stop sign and his truck literally ran Casey over. She did survive for a little while and maybe we'll get into that later, but we got the call to go to the hospital. We waited and waited and waited and then two doctors came into the room and I tell people they didn't even have to tell us that Casey was dead. We just looked at their faces and we knew that she was dead.

And everything changed in our lives as it would for anyone who's listening here who has children, has a loved one who was killed in a traffic crash, everything changes. Casey was, she was really wonderful. She was, she kinda had the goods on her dad. She would like remind me what I'm doing wrong. She would also say, mostly in middle school, that I was the person in the world who embarrassed her more than anyone else.

Travis: Yeah, I

Joel Feldman: get And I wear that title proudly, I think a dad, that's what we're supposed to do with our daughters. But anyway, I was good at it.

Travis: Yeah.

Joel Feldman: She would, she'd often remind me, she'd say, have you reached out to your brother? Have you talked to grandma? That kind of stuff. She was very, very family oriented.

Travis: Yeah. Girls, they kinda are the glue of the families, aren't they? They kinda remind the the guys to start talking. And yeah. Casey, you know, I I've seen some videos that your family's put together over the years with her friends talking about about, you know, being friends with Casey and then what they've learned with what happened to her.

And, you know, when I go into these high schools, know, I always start talking about Casey because I said this all, you know, started because of her, obviously. But I said, you know, Casey just sounds like that kind of person that a lot of people said, like, that was my best friend. Like, she had very special close relationships. It seemed like with a lot of, you know, young women and others, and it just seems like she was just just an amazing young lady. And I tell you this all the time, but my heart always goes out to you and your and your wife and your son for for what you guys lost.

Joel Feldman: Thank you. Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned that, about that everybody, a lot of folks said that she was her best friend. We knew she had one or two best friends, but afterwards, or at least that was our impression, but after she was killed, three different young ladies came up to me in addition to the ones that we thought were her best friend, and they said that Casey was their best friend, and I just asked why, and two of them said, Well, because I could tell Casey really awful stuff about me and she would never judge me. Never judge me, she was always there to support me, and actually one of those friends is battling cancer now, one of her friends, so.

Travis: Oh, wow. I'm sorry to hear that. So after you lost Casey, so, okay, So at this time, take me back to 2009, Joel, you're a personal injury lawyer in is it Philadelphia at the time? Yes. So you're doing so you're you're representing people.

So cell phone cell phones weren't huge back in 2009. I wasn't practicing law yet. I mean, you seeing a lot of distracted driving cases in your career at that point in time?

Joel Feldman: Well, as I know that you, you know, you've been very much on this issue in terms of distracted driving, but you unlike a lot of other folks recognize that there's things other than cell phone use that constitute distracted driving. So yeah, I had a case where, and this is testimony from a deposition, The defendant truck driver, I asked him what happened and he basically held his hands up like this and he said, I was holding the steering wheel, I went by a seven Eleven and I saw a really hot girl in tight shorts and I turned to watch her. My truck went over the double yellow line and hit your client's car and killed their four year old son. I had another case back then where a young woman was eating yogurt. She was trying to steer with her knee, she had the yogurt container in one hand, the spoon in the other, and she paralyzed my 17 year old client.

So there were phone cases as well, but you know, not like it is today. Not like it is today, but we should not lose track of that. There are lots of other things in addition to phones that can distract drivers.

Travis: I've had, yeah, I've had distraction from just looking at somebody who just caught their attention or didn't fit the neighborhood and they were just staring at somebody. I've had those cases. I've had eating while driving cases. I've had makeup cases, putting on makeup while driving, reaching for stuff in the back seat, reaching for kids. So yeah, there's all sorts of distracted driving circumstances besides just cell phones.

Cell phones, obviously, we're seeing a lot more of today. But you've you've been dealing with distracted driving in in your as your your job as a lawyer for a long time. And then after Casey died, tell me about that time period. How, when did your organization start, and when did you start kind of committing more time to the cause?

Joel Feldman: Oh, and we've talked about this when we met Travis, that, you know, there are lots of folks who are personal injury attorneys and probably the folks listening see ads on TV and all, and they may not know personal injury attorneys, but one of the really neat things about it is the relationship you build with your client, and I know you're the same way. Before Casey was killed, I had represented a number of families who'd lost children, and some of those families set up foundations with the money that we obtained from settlement, and so it was something that I had seen before. So it was, I don't if it was the back of my mind, the front of my mind, but I was driven, Casey hadn't graduated school. She hadn't found a job, a career, hadn't married. She didn't have children.

How would this wonderful young woman be remembered? And I thought it was my job to do something to remember her, and that's why we, actually it was, I was just looking at some corporate legal papers the other day, it was a month to the day after Casey was killed that I went into the local court and I opened up an estate in Casey's name. It was a month.

Travis: A month. So when did is that when end distracted driving started?

Joel Feldman: No. We opened up the foundation. I knew at the beginning that I wanted to do something with respect to the way she died. It took a little bit of time to find out exactly what the driver was doing. Right.

It's pretty obvious that someone who runs through a stop sign in broad daylight, there's something going on. And they weren't speeding, was no drugs or alcohol involved, so yes, we knew that the driver was not paying attention, equal distraction, but it took a little bit of time. I think I did my first talk, Casey was killed in July 2009, I think I did my first talk in February 2010.

Travis: Oh, wow. So it it hadn't even been twelve months. That's I mean, that that in and of itself is incredible. You know, I try not to, but sometimes I put myself in your shoes. I'm like, if I had gone through something like this, you know, I I don't think I would be able to get out of bed probably for the rest of my life.

And and you have you have taken this thing, this tragedy, and, obviously, you know, I know it and everybody who's seen the presentation knows it. You know, I just wanna applaud you for the response to the tragedy because you have saved hundreds and hundreds of You

Joel Feldman: know, I appreciate that. We don't know what we're capable of until something happens, and I remember before Casey was killed, the toughest cases I've had, and I'm sure you've had these too, would be representing parents whose kids were killed. Awful cases, I mean you think about it. When each of us gets older and live hopefully full lives, our children bury us. It's not the natural order of things for parents to bury their children, and I can tell you that as sympathetic as I was, as understanding as I was with parents, try to be understanding, being an observer of someone else's grief is vastly different from suffering that unimaginable loss yourself.

So my world was shaken and there's studies and things, could look this up, there's something called post traumatic growth. People who do suffer trauma, some of those folks, and I'm fortunate that I'm one, do make changes in their life and they become actually stronger people in different ways, gain purpose for life, a greater appreciation for life, more connections. I mean, I got through my daughter's death. I get through anything. I could get through anything now.

Travis: Yeah. Well, you're one resilient person. Let's talk about the Indistracted Driving presentation and what the group does. What does it do? Who does it speak to?

How does this work? What is the cause? Mean, obviously it's in the title End Distracted Driving, but tell us about its mission, tell us about what that organization is doing, know, week in and week out.

Joel Feldman: Yeah, you know, we're personal injury attorneys. We're used to crashes, we're used to seeing people suffer horrible injuries, we're used to representing the families of those who've been killed, and we're comfortable speaking with people. So, I felt comfortable. I look back on it and I didn't know what I was doing when I first did talks. It was sort of like, I don't know if it was ego or whatever, saying, okay, my daughter's dead, killed by a distracted driver.

I could just go into a school and talk about distracted driving. I look back at it.

Travis: My dad has a joke. If you wanna learn a topic really well, sign up to give a speech about it,

Joel Feldman: and then you'll be forced Exactly, to learn I agree with that 100%. So it was probably after doing half a dozen presentations, and they seemed to go okay, that I said, you you don't know what you're doing. So I reached out to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, literally in the backyard from where my office is, they do a lot of stuff. They were the kindest folks. I just happened to connect with a woman, Flora Winston, who's a medical doctor, an engineer, one of the best researchers in the country for teen issues, and she kind of took me under her wing, said, hey, we'll help you develop a distracted driving presentation, but there's one condition.

She being a researcher said, we want to create pre presentation surveys to give to the kids, post presentation surveys, so we can measure change and we could make changes to the presentation to make it as effective as possible.

Travis: Okay, wow. I didn't realize that was happening early on.

Joel Feldman: Oh, really early on. And you know, I think I was very fortunate in that regard because it put me into this mindset that you have to pay attention to whether or not you're making change. You have to pay attention to whether or not you're improving or changing attitudes and behaviors, and it's the only way really to know whether or not you need to change something. Just think about it. You know, at the end of a presentation, you ask kids, Well, what did you think?

What did you think? What are they going to say to you? Yeah. Not too many kids are going to say, Hey, you know, that really sucked. Know, pardon the language, but they're not going to say that.

You know, so with this thing, it's clinical, it's removed, so that was really, really helpful. I was introduced to experts who are what they call behavior change experts. You know, not surprisingly, there's studies about why people change, what helps them change attitudes and behaviors, and I was introduced to that whole field of literature and research, and I still pay attention to that, but there are a lot of theories behind our presentation, and there's a lot of theoretical and actual practical backing for it, and if we have time, we can go into that.

Travis: Yeah, I think that's important for, like if you're a high school administrator listening to this, the presentation is scientific. And like, as Joel said, it's been proven to be effective. And that's so important. It's not a personal injury lawyer walking into your gymnasium and saying, hey, you've been injured in a car accident, call me for a free consultation. Joel has a very strict rule.

There's no plugs. No mention of any of that kind of stuff. It is, hey, let's get in there and let's get to work. Let me talk to you about distracted driving and how it's affecting our community. We all get calls as personal injury lawyers across the country on this thing all the time.

But we can do something about it. And it starts with these high school students. So I don't know about you, but that's been some of my resistance. They don't say that, but I just feel like sometimes the schools, I don't know if we want a lawyer coming to speak to all these kids, but I'm like, no, it's gonna be great. I promise you it's free.

It takes like an hour and it's gonna save a life and it's gonna save someone's conscience who might go in and cause one of these accidents in their future.

Joel Feldman: And you know what you just said is really, really important because I have worked with probably, you know, I have 125 volunteers. Quite honestly, there's probably about 40 to 50 that I've actually worked with and know. I mean, I've been on an email with the rest, I don't really know them, to be honest with you, but there's something about, you know, saving lives, and again, you think about it, you know, someone might say, well, that's against your interest as a lawyer. You want there to be more crashes and all, but no, it's not like that. You feel good about doing it, and I would say probably 70% of the schools are interested to know that it has been studied and updating since that time Children's Hospital did it, they issued a paper, they said it was effective, but they said it was deficient in some ways and we started to change that.

Fast forward 2022, the US Department of Transportation asked if they could create some new surveys around our presentation and study it. Of course, I said yes. 2023, 2024 they did it, and we just got another one back from not the US Department of Transportation, but someone else, and we're getting the presentation better and better and better. I am not a statistics guy. If there's folks listening who are into statistics, forgive me, because what you're going to hear is not really very detailed, but they found that it's statistically significant changes in changing attitudes about distracted driving and actually some of the kids' behaviors and which was really unexpected but a great surprise, many of the parents of the kids pre to post had also reduced their distracted driving because their kids got on their case.

So that was pretty cool too. So it's good to know that we have that. And if I'm asking people to do the presentation to volunteer their time because no one gets paid, I wanna be able to promise them that it's the best presentation out there.

Travis: Absolutely. And yeah, and you're awesome because, you know, you're not an ego guy. Your whole thing is how can this presentation be as most effective as possible? And you put that above everything else because, you know, you're honoring Casey and you're saving lives at the same time. So it's it's an amazing presentation.

Let's talk about the issue, right? Distracted driving. Okay? It is now 2024. I kinda joke with people sometimes that, yeah, cars are getting smarter, but it seems like people are getting dumber at a faster rate.

So our roads are more dangerous than than ever. So Joel, tell me from the statistics, even though you just said you're not a statistics guy, but just how how big of a problem is distracted driving? Just how dangerous is it? And when I say distracted driving, let's talk about the, you know, what we see today a lot, which is people texting and driving or people jacking around on social media while driving.

Joel Feldman: Yeah. It's texting. It's social media. It's changing the music. It's and and hopefully, we'll be able to talk about this, but it's programming the GPS while you're driving.

Yeah. I'm a big proponent of using the GPS. I fly all across the country. I rent cars. I have no idea where I'm going.

GPS is wonderful, but that's a task related to driving, but you want to program it while you're stopped. So, if you go on the US Department of Transportation's website and you look, you'll see that since Casey was killed in 2009, we've hovered around three thousand three thousand one hundred deaths per year to distracted driving. That was always thought to be really underrepresented of the real amount. There's several reasons for that. Compare it to drunk driving.

We do not have a blood test that will confirm someone is driving distracted. You have a blood test for drunk driving. I don't know what the numbers are, but it's got to be well above ninety five, ninety six percent of the cases. You can prove it.

Travis: They don't always come out of the car admitting that they were staring at their cell phone.

Joel Feldman: Yeah, so what are the reasons why it's underrepresented? Unless you have a witness to the distraction, someone else who saw the driver, as you said Travis, people don't hop out of the car and say I'm really sorry I was texting. So, what the US Department of Transportation and NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration collect is they collect details from the states from crash reports. So whatever crash reports are filled out by the state that are tagged distracted driving, that's what they collect, that's what informs that three thousand three thousand one hundred per year number. So, many states don't even have a box to check off on their crash report for distracted driving.

It's less now, but of course they're more and more getting that, but it's, you know, still don't have that option. Sometimes it's just as easy for the police officer, and I'm not being critical of police at all, because they've been great supporters of ours, and they have a real good job to do in terms of after a crash, but also prevention. Sometimes it's easier just to say a vehicle ran off roadway, vehicle crossed centerline, something like that. Sometimes they think it might be drowsy driving, the driver died, you know, why did they just go off the side of the road? Well, maybe they fell asleep if it's at night.

So, we knew that it was underrepresented. There were some studies that had been done that said it might be underrepresented by 40%. NHTSA released a report in February 2023 titled something like The Economic Cost of Motor Vehicle Crashes. And what they did is they looked at data from an ongoing years long study where they'd found thousands of people, they put cameras in their car, they instrumented their car, and they just have this incredible source of data. What is it?

If there's a severe event, if there's a hard brake, a crash, a swerve, it'll preserve film and they can look at, I think it's ten seconds before the event, ten seconds after. Now it could be not a crash, it could be a crash, it could be a near crash. So they had researchers look at this and look at this, and after looking at that, they found that rather than that three thousand one hundred, which is about eight percent, maybe ten percent depending upon the year of total traffic fatalities, the number was twenty nine percent. So today, we are very confident that we're killing at least 10,000, probably eleven thousand, twelve thousand people a year based upon distracted driving. So that's a really, really big thing.

You want to be able to show people how bad a problem it is. So in terms of the frequency and the toll, that's the number that we're using now. Greater than ten thousand, just to be conservative.

Travis: Greater than ten thousand people are dying in our country from distracted driving a year.

Joel Feldman: Every year.

Travis: Every year. I have seen this number is one of those numbers that sticks out to me, twenty three. You're 23 times more likely to be in a crash if you're texting while you're driving than if you're just driving normal. Twenty three, that's a big number Joel.

Joel Feldman: Yeah, I think that number, if I recall, came from a study involving commercial truck drivers. There were some issues with the study, I can't recall what it was. So I think most people now will say it's anywhere between four and twelve times, but it's still awful.

Travis: Yeah, it's still terrible. We just know as an adult, just driving around, you see it, if you look over on the highway, and we'll talk about this kind of stuff, but you look over and you see someone staring at their phone, you kinda know that they're doing that before you even get up to them because they're swerving all over their lane. I mean, it's very obvious, and then five minutes later, it's just crazy what we see on the roads and we all know how dangerous it is. So what are we gonna do about it? That's kinda what I like to think about.

Teenagers, let's talk about kids for a second. I saw in your presentation, think it was the first time I saw this stat that teenagers today are more likely to be killed by a distracted driver than a drunk driver. When I first learned that, like, it hit me, like, it just floored me. Because when I was in high school, we heard about drunk driving all the time. You know, we had shattered dreams back at my high school.

I'm sure you're familiar with that program, Joel. They they come in and they staged this crash, and they had the theater kids out there, you know, draped all over these cars with fake blood all of them. And some of them were screaming, some of them were pretending to be dead. And it was this big drunk driving thing. And I just remember, like, always heard about drunk driving and that sort of stuff.

We didn't hear anything about distracted driving back then. This was in the early two thousands back when I was in high school.

Joel Feldman: Well, let me stop you there. Just think about that. All your listeners, if I asked you in the past thirty days how many of you have driven drunk, you know, maybe a couple would say yes.

Travis: Yeah, if they're being It's

Joel Feldman: not socially acceptable to drive drunk. I mean, and that's what you're talking about. As a kid, this was drilled into your head, drilled into my son's head and everything. And I'll admit, and I've admitted this before, that when I grew up, we would drive after drinking. My son can't believe it, but we would drive after drinking because we hadn't had these programs.

MAD had just barely come along, the laws hadn't really been changed, and so people would have a couple of drinks for the road, so to speak. I mean, it's unbelievable to think about it, but it's so different. Now, if I'd ask your audience how many of you have at first been in a car in the past thirty days where your driver was looking at their phone or something, taking their eyes off the road, probably many of them would agree, and if I said how about you, probably lots of them would agree too. So, you know, it's a totally different environment. Drunk driving is not socially acceptable, and clearly based upon what you said, and your audience's own experience, it's not the same way with distracted driving, but we can get there.

I'm optimistic that we can get there.

Travis: Yeah, I am too. And what we're gonna talk about today is how do we get there? So let's talk about why. Joel, why do you think people drive distracted so often? Is a boredom thing?

Or is it just, I'm so addicted to my cell phone now, or I'm wondering what's going on in social media? Is it that whole endorphin kind of thing? Is everybody on their phone so much while they're driving or otherwise driving distracted?

Joel Feldman: Well, think we could ask ourselves because unfortunately most of us are experts when it comes to distracted driving because we've done it so much, We didn't cover this before but I drove distracted before Casey was killed.

Travis: Yeah, yeah, me too.

Joel Feldman: All the time. I mean, think about that. We go into the courtroom, we argue how bad it was for someone else to drive distracted, we ask the jury to award a ton of money for our client, the family, whatever the case may be, and then we go out and we drive distracted. So what is that attitude? That attitude is, and I'm sure this is gonna resonate with some of your audience, the attitude is, I hate it when I see other people driving distracted.

Yeah, yeah. Mean, those folks, when they're driving near me, especially if I have my kids in the car, my wife, I want them to be paying attention to the road. I want them to be safe, but it's okay when I do it because I'm a really good driver. So as you know, I've worked with, now it's close to 30 people who've killed while driving distracted. Wow.

They come to me through court systems to complete the community service part of their sentence, the hours. I just spoke with a man yesterday from Tennessee, and we're gonna be working together, and he had killed a mom and dad and they left four children.

Travis: Oh my God.

Joel Feldman: I mean, it's, well, if people work with me though, I wanna help them, I wanna help them tell their story, I want that story to resonate and maybe give it another reason so people will choose not to drive distracted, and it is a choice to choose not to drive distracted. So I asked them, why did you drive distracted? Why did you drive distracted? And that's why in the presentation we have that slide where we go through the excuses, and I'll just rattle those off now. It was just a few seconds.

I'm only looking away for a few seconds. I'm a safe driver. I've never been in a crash.

Travis: Yeah.

Joel Feldman: I'm a really good multitasker. Everybody does it. Some people say they were bored. It was an important text. It was an important call.

I was only changing the music I'm hearing a lot from kids, probably you're seeing that in your cases as well. So those are the excuses that the people who've killed while driving distracted gave, and I believe it was State Farm Insurance that did a survey, pretty much identical. They surveyed people, why do you drive distracted? How do you rationalize it? So that's the answer, you know, with different excuses, rationalizations, but it really comes down to, I don't think anything bad's gonna happen when I do it.

Travis: Yeah, I talk about this all the time. It comes up so much with juries, with taking We did an episode on trampoline parks and this kind of idea came up the other day too. It's just the idea that it it it's not gonna happen to me. Like, I I can drive distracted because it nothing bad will happen to me. Like, I'm somehow special or different.

I, you know, I don't need to listen to Tim talk about insurance because I won't be in a car accident or or whatever it is. It's just that that bias that kind of permeates everything that that we do. And it comes up with texting and driving for sure and and other distracted driving. Just that it won't happen to me so I can do it. So those people that tell me about what it's like working with people because, you know, I've certainly deposed people who have caused bad car accidents, but but that, you know, deposition's a lot different than, you know, working with somebody and forming a relationship and and, you know, letting them become an advocate or or whatever it is that they're going to be doing.

So what has that experience been like for you and what are those conversations like?

Joel Feldman: Yeah, it's, and again, like you, I depose people occasionally in court, but mostly depositions of people who killed while driving distracted. But what we do in the presentation is we ask people just to assume that they're driving, they didn't put their phones on do not disturb while driving, and we can talk about that later. That's just a setting that blocks incoming notifications when the phone senses the car is moving so we can avoid being tempted, but this particular day we didn't put it on, we're looking at the road, we look down at a notification, we look up, we look down, and boom, we hit something. And there's a story in the presentation about a five year old kid who was crossing the street in a crosswalk, is hit by a driver.

Travis: Little X.

Joel Feldman: The driver doesn't even realize he's hit a kid because the kid didn't go on the hood of the car, as often pedestrians will when you hit him. He was so little he got sucked under the car and dragged down the road, paralyzed from the neck down, and that could be any of us. And just go back to that ten thousand people a year now. Casey was killed in 2009, so it's fifteen years. Ten thousand people a year conservatively, that's 150,000 families mourning.

But look at the flip side, that's 150,000 drivers. And do you think your life would ever be the same? All these people I meet, including the one that I talked to just a day or two ago, they've never gotten over it and they never will. And I'll tell you Travis, I've had something happen to me now three or four times over the last couple months. After I do a presentation at a business, I've had men come up to me, 55, 60 years old, these are mostly trucking company, utility presentations, and they come up to me with tears in their eyes and they give me a date, twenty two, eighteen, sixteen years ago.

That was the day that they killed someone while driving and they've never gotten over it. Golly. Never gotten over, and neither would any of us. No. And they I talked to them about it.

What's the worst part of it? And we should think about this, all of us. What's the worst part of it? I wanna make it right, and I can't. I can never make it better.

Yeah. Saying you're sorry just doesn't do it. I wanna go back to that day and make a different choice, but these folks can't, and they'll never get over it, and neither would any of us, never.

Travis: Yeah, that's so, yeah. And it's such a powerful message. Like everybody out there listening who hasn't gone through this yet, who hasn't caused a bad accident yet because of distracted driving. Like you have the choice to minimize the chances of you ever causing carnage like this, that carnage that the Feldman family went through, or a 150,000 other families have been through since 2009. Like, it is it is a choice.

It is yours. Nobody can force you to try distracted. So take it very, very seriously. And, you know, that that choice needs to be made by all of us on the roads to make our roads as as safe as as safe as possible.

Joel Feldman: You know, just just think about that now, like Distracted driving wasn't a huge thing, as you indicated before, when Casey was killed. People were doing it, but we didn't know about it.

Travis: Right. We didn't have a name

Joel Feldman: for it. Yeah, we now know that at least one hundred and fifty thousand drivers have killed other people in our country based upon their choice to drive distracted. So, if it was one thousand, if it was ten thousand, twenty thousand, that'd be bad enough, but why should any of us think that given that one hundred and fifty thousand people have driven distracted and killed someone, why should we think when we choose to drive distracted that it's gonna be a miracle and it's not gonna happen to us? If you do it long enough, it's gonna happen to you. And while I've worked with those who've killed distracted drivers, a 17 year old, a couple 18, 19 year olds, I've worked with 30 year olds, 40 year olds, 50 year olds.

I think one was 60 maybe.

Travis: Yeah. If you keep doing it, it's going to catch up to you. It's just a matter of time. You know, if you look at the statistics, you know, I see it. I think one of the reasons why distracted driving, Joel drives me so crazy is because I have little kids.

Drunk driving, I see in my practice a lot, but you can look at the charts on drunk driving and obviously the drunk driving fatalities, huge spikes late at night, past midnight on Friday and Saturday night or major holidays and Super Bowls and stuff like that. Distracted driving pretty much happens morning, noon, and night. And so it is the big dangerous thing happening on the roads when me and my family is on the roads heading to school and things like that. And that's a big message that I give to the high school students. And it's, we now, it's not enough just to do driver's ed anymore.

Young people, especially. I talk about this all the time. You to learn that driving today requires a hyper state of vigilance all day long. It's not just in the evenings. Like when I was learning how to drive, I was told if you're driving at night, drive extra careful because there's gonna be some drunk drivers on the road.

Now I tell people like, you need to drive extra careful all the time, and it's because of distracted drivers.

Joel Feldman: Yeah. The dangers on our road, we now know that 29%, a little less than a third, the crashes are due to distracted driving. From two thousand

Travis: Probably under

Joel Feldman: Yeah. That might even be an underestimate well. That's a good estimate. I'm comfortable with twenty nine, thirty percent killing more than ten thousand people a year. Traffic crashes in The US have gone up since 2015.

And if you compare The United States to other developed countries, we're the worst in terms of overall crashes and fatalities. I think per 100,000 inhabitants, the number for The US is thirteen people, thirteen deaths per 100,000 inhabitants per year. I think for New Zealand, it's about seven. And then I think for Germany, The UK, France, it's about four. So, about one third as dangerous driving in Europe as it is for driving in The US.

Just we allow it, we allow it.

Travis: And what's your hypothesis on why that is Joel? Is it just a like, liberty and freedom thing? Like, we don't want government telling us what to do. I mean, we obviously have, you know, strict drunk driving laws. And so we we have seat belt laws.

I mean, we allow government regulation to some extent inside of our cars. What is it about, know, Americans not wanting, you know, is it that issue? Is that why you think America is so bad at

Joel Feldman: Well, has a lot to do with speeding. Speeding is a big component as well, and particularly since the pandemic. They noticed that speeding was really off the charts during the pandemic. They thought it was probably a lack of enforcement. I mean, you don't want police officers stopping people, COVID, that sort of thing, but it hasn't really abated.

And that's a large part of it. A large part of it is, you know, just, again, you mentioned it, and we mentioned it, that we have made drunk driving socially unacceptable. We've personalized it, that drunk driver. The way people look at distracted driving today is they talk about it as it's being dangerous, it's risky. So, you know, let's put it this way more bluntly.

If someone had told me before Casey was killed that what I was doing was dangerous, my reaction, well, I'm a nice guy. I would've said, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. But inside, I'm thinking, maybe it's dangerous when you do it buddy, but not when I do it because I'm a great driver. But if somebody had said to me, and a lot of people are now saying this and this is why I'm optimistic, it was selfish. That's different.

You can describe my driving, that's one thing. But if you say my driving is selfish, you're not just talking about my driving, you're talking about me as a person, my character, my values. That's what we need to do, and as I said, I'm optimistic people are doing that. We're holding people accountable. That's the change in culture that we need to end distracted driving.

I mean, no one wants to be thought of as a selfish person, so I often ask audiences, who here thinks that being that distracted driver that everybody hates to see, even though we drive distracted, we hate to see it, Who thinks being that distracted driver is consistent with our own personal values and beliefs?

Travis: Right, nobody. That's, yeah, that's powerful. And that's really important. Let's talk about parents. Because parents are by definition, not very selfish people.

They're giving up their lives for their kids. I mean, everything we do for our children. And so if parents are not selfish people, why do parents drive distracted even with their kids in their car, Joel? I see it daily.

Joel Feldman: Well, Travis, let me pick on you for a moment. Okay?

Travis: Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

Joel Feldman: And we do this in our We're business talks when we have

Travis: out of time, Joel. I'm just kidding.

Joel Feldman: Travis, raise your hand and keep it up if you would do anything to keep your children safe. Now keep your hand up, don't put it down. Now only keep your hand up if you haven't driven distracted with your kid in the car.

Travis: Yeah, know, I get it. Yeah, I know. And I do that in the presentations too. It's something that until you sit down and think about that choice, it just, you go into autopilot behind the wheel, like you said, these biases kind of come in, even if they're subconscious biases that you're thinking that this won't happen to you and you're a safe driver. And so you're okay to do it every now and then or something like that.

Now, certainly since I've started working with you and I've learned about Casey and all that kind of stuff, it's a behavior that I've nipped in the bud. But yeah, But before then, for sure, I have done it. And I and I tell the high school kids this, hey, guys, circle of trust here. Like, I'm not here to preach at you. I'm not here to yell at you.

I've got kids in the car. I've got I know more about distracted driving than any of y'all because of what I do for a living. And I still and I I still drove distracted too. So, you know, raise your hand if y'all's parents drive distracted, and they all of course raise their hands. But like, you know, that's a really important part of the presentation I think is just getting that level of, okay, like, he's he's he's okay.

He's one of us. So we all have this problem in society, so how do we work together to fix it? Is kind of the message there.

Joel Feldman: Yeah, yeah. Think about that. Your older children are taking it upon themselves to teach your younger children not to drive distracted and making a choice not to drive like mom and dad. Hey, parents, what's going on here? We've abdicated our responsibility, and I bet you each and every one of those parents have told their kids, Don't drive distracted when you get your license.

Are you driving distracted? Don't drive distracted. No one likes a hypocrite. No one likes a hypocrite. And the facts, the statistics are awful for kids whose parents drive distracted.

They're three times as likely to drive distracted as their peers if their peers' parents don't drive distracted. So, you you think about it. Kids, when they start driving, it's tough to have inexperience. But add to that the temptation to use our phones, which we all have, and then seeing mom and dad drive distracted, sending a message, even though mom and dad say verbally, don't drive distracted, it's okay. Mom and dad do it.

Mom and dad do it. So it's really hard for the kids. That's why we need to focus on the kids and having kids tell mom and dad that they're uncomfortable with being driven distracted is really, really powerful, really powerful.

Travis: Yeah, that's huge. Know, cause it's hard for somebody, you know, it's like that old dog new tricks kind of deal. And it's, a grownup isn't gonna be as receptive to hearing this message, but when they hear it from kids, if the young generation and this generation is amazing, Joel, you and I have talked about this a lot. For anybody who's tried to hire a young person recently, almost to a T, it's not just about, Hey, how much money am I gonna make here? What are the hours and vacation policy?

But it's all about what does this company stand for? What are we gonna do? Do I believe in the mission? Am I gonna be a valued part of the team? They wanna change the world for the better.

It's a very altruistic generation. And that's the part where I tell them, let's lean into that on this issue. Because if the young generation gets their act together on distracted driving, then they're gonna be the change agents because their parents and their people in their circles, they're gonna follow suit.

Joel Feldman: Yeah. Let me just interject there. It just popped into my head. Many of us take Uber and Lyft. One thing I would recommend when you get in, and I hope your audience feels comfortable saying this, just when you get in, just say to the driver, you you seem like a really good person, good guy, good gal, whatever, I just want to let you know that a friend of mine, his daughter was killed by a distracted driver, so really flip me out if you'd be looking at your phone while driving, And they don't, and that's a way right then and there to let them know about it.

Travis: Yeah, that's a good example. I mean, so let's talk about that. Being a passenger in a car, so what do you do if you're sitting there in the front seat or in the back seat and the driver's looking at their phone while driving? Because we are, we've all been in those situations.

Joel Feldman: Yeah, your first temptation is to say, put your phone down. To give them an order, put your phone down, you're gonna kill us, you're gonna cause a crash. What's the matter with you, you're nuts? It doesn't work so well. There's interpersonal communication skills and it comes under the heading of I Feel Statements, and I encourage people to Google it, it's not just for distracted driving.

And basically what that says is, if you're in a situation like that, and if you give a command to someone, they're likely to get defensive. Travis, you're gonna kill us. Put your phone down. No, Joel. I'm a great driver.

I've never been in a crash. Where have I gone? Nowhere. Travis, hey. I really care about you, but I'm a little uncomfortable when you drive me and look at your phone.

I've now just told you how I feel. I haven't asked you to put the phone down. I've communicated to you that something you're doing is causing me concern, and in the context of a caring relationship, guess what? Travis, you're gonna put the phone down. And for kids, it's 95% of kids are going to put the phone down if a friend just tells them how they feel about it.

Don't confront them. Don't tell them what they're doing is dangerous. Just tell them how you feel about it.

Travis: Yeah, it's that simple. Hey.

Joel Feldman: And you can do that with coworkers. We teach that at businesses a lot. You know, sometimes people are with their boss and they're a little nervous about it. They can just say that comment and, you know, we don't guarantee it's gonna work, but it's a way that these talk about it.

Travis: Well, mean, if somebody doesn't put their phone down after you've just told them, Hey, I don't feel safe right now. Then you need to think long and hard about that relationship in general. So that's powerful. I mean, and especially when it comes from kids, if a kid tells their parent that, and I joke with the kids in these presentations, I'm like, just add the three little words to the front of it and it'll be extra powerful. So, hey mom, I love you, but I don't feel safe right now.

Like what mom in the world wouldn't drop their phone and just immediately change?

Joel Feldman: Well, for the parents who are listening, I mean, could you imagine your, and we're actually, we might get into this, but we have a K through one distracted driving picture book and we teach that language to kids. We have a second through fifth grade elementary school distracted driving lesson plan and we teach those I feel statements. Just as a parent, just imagine, you're driving along, your little kid says to you, Mommy, I love you, but I don't feel safe. Or Daddy, Daddy, I love you, but I don't feel safe when you drive me and look at your phone. God.

I mean, it's like a ton of bricks on your chest.

Travis: Yeah, there's a stat that your kids are just as persuasive for stuff like this as the law. Both of them have like eighty seven percent hit rates. It's like the thing that keeps people out of jail is just as effective as hearing from it from their own children. So yeah, kids have a ton of power in this situation.

Joel Feldman: Yeah, you know, the stat you're talking about came from a National Safety Council survey of a thousand drivers, a thousand parents, and I was working with them, and I remember I was pushing them and pushing them and pushing them to put in something like that. They didn't want to at the beginning. And then, well, obviously for my own purposes because I want to know and I want to use it in talks, but finally they did and it came up with 87% of parents, think, or either 78 or 87% said kids are the best deterrent for us driving distracted tied with strict laws.

Travis: So, okay, so strict laws, let's talk about that. Texas, I imagine, correct me if I'm wrong, have most states enacted some kind of law on distracted driving by now? I assume if Texas In has, then everyone

Joel Feldman: terms of texting.

Travis: Terms of texting,

Joel Feldman: I think every state has a law against texting. There's still two or three, Missouri is one, that says the cop can't pull you over if they see you texting. But if you're speeding, then they can give you a ticket if they also see you texting. So it's primary enforcement versus secondary enforcement. And there's now 30 states, Pennsylvania, my state is the most recent state, to go to what we call a hands free only law, but it's just 30 states.

But you know, you think about it. I mean, I'm a big proponent of changing the law, but we have laws against speeding. We have laws against people going through red lights. The enforcement generally is not there. Laws only affect some people and only deter some people.

We have to get to the people's heart. That's what we have to get to. We have to get them to self evaluate themselves, say, you know, what kind of a person I am. And I've, you know, gone head to head, I mean, I'm not confrontational, but people who are adamant, adamant distracted drivers, great drivers, and just going through this personal thing, this respect of other people, this selfless versus selfish, and you know, it's working, it's working. I mean, I have to learn how to do it better myself, you know, it's a process, but it's working, it's working.

But enforcement is so important. I mean, I think, I'm not sure if it's Texas or Florida, more people are killed each year than any other state. Think

Travis: It's probably Texas. Joel, has something, there's this campaign that TxDOT is doing called End the Streak. All right. And I think I've, I don't know if I've told you this or not, but, and I was just looking at my phone to confirm this date, but it's been since November 7 of, are you ready for this? Two thousand since we haven't had somebody die on our roads in Texas.

That's twenty four years.

Joel Feldman: Yeah.

Travis: I don't even know if Bush had gotten into office yet in November 2000. How insane is that?

Joel Feldman: Yeah, I remember seeing something like that, hoping they could have one day where a Texan or a visitor to your state did not

Travis: We haven't had one And, you know, it's kinda getting to the point where it's kinda gimmicky. I mean, if zero people died on the roads tomorrow, that would be great. But then, you know, five people died the next day, you know, so we're not fixing the problem just if we ever do happen to end that streak. But it's just a, it's just kind of a, it's just kind of a point that this issue is it's right here in Texas. It's right here pretty much everywhere.

Know the fine in Texas if you get caught for the first time texting and driving? You want to guess?

Joel Feldman: $25.

Travis: $25. Guess you've seen that before. Yeah, Joel, in Texas, right now, we're $25 fine, 25 to $99 first time offense. What states, like if a state like really wanted to take this seriously, like what states have done a good job on this? And what do those laws look like?

Joel Feldman: I know that Alaska has a $1,000 fine for texting and driving. I believe Utah has a $750 fine, but those are the aberrations. There are some states that will assess points, but most don't for the first infraction, of course, unless you kill somebody, that sort of thing.

Travis: Yeah.

Joel Feldman: What we've talked about earlier is the hands free laws, and basically that says that you can use your phone while driving, but it has to be an amount or connected to you know, through the infotainment system, CarPlay or whatever, and to initiate something or to receive a call, to make a call, you can a button, one touch or a swipe. That's pretty much how the laws work. And so, they've enacted those laws. Pennsylvania is the thirtieth state. It actually goes into effect in a month or so, but the first year they're not gonna assess any penalties, they're just gonna give warnings and educate people.

They've done studies on Ohio, Georgia, and one other state that have adopted those laws more recently, and they're finding that they reduce crashes by anywhere from five to 10% once the law is enacted. For the first ninety days, it's at the high end of that 10%, and then after the first ninety days, when it's not in the press and there's not high visibility, enforcement may go down a little bit. So, it's helping. But as I said earlier, you know, it's not enough. People have to take it upon themselves.

I had this kid, I'm really skipping around here, but I had this kid who saw my presentation. He was a film student. He was gonna go on to Columbia in New York City. And to go on to film, he said, Can I make a video for you? And he made this little video, and I'm not sure if you've seen it.

It's the nursery rhyme one. So basically, it starts out showing little kids in school playing together, cooperating, being really nice, and they talk about the golden rule. Treat other people the way you want to be treated. And then they take it to the harsh reality of people, you know, 90% of people say that distracted driving is very dangerous or dangerous, yet fifty to sixty percent of those people do it anyway. And then they come back to the nursery kids playing together and they say, it's a value, treat other people the way you want to be treated, the golden rule, that we teach little kids but we somehow lose track of it.

And you think about it, We know how we want to be treated on the road by the people we share the road with. We want them to pay attention. We want them to do everything they can so that we get home safely to our loved ones. Why can't we do the same for them?

Travis: Absolutely.

Joel Feldman: But I'm optimistic. I don't want anyone listening to this thinking I'm not optimistic. I am optimistic. I'm actually going be in Texas in January, Midland in Odessa doing some company talks.

Travis: Okay. Cool. Yeah. Like I like I told you earlier, Joel will go anywhere. He's all over the place.

So what about okay. So if you're on the roads, I I think my answer to this question has changed over the years. What do you do, Joel, if you were driving on the road and you see a distracted driver? Like, say, if somebody in another car?

Joel Feldman: I I will admit in the past, that I would honk my horn maybe I give an obscene will admit that. I don't do that anymore. People are crazy on the roads. People have guns. There's road rage incidents are increasing.

And I particularly tell the kids, if someone cuts you off, someone is distracted driving or something, let them go in front of you. They can't cause you any harm if they're in front of you. Do not honk the horn, don't make eye contact with them because they'll follow you home. People are nuts today. So, just let them get in front of me.

Oftentimes, like I look at speed limits differently, and I say, you know, I used to look at speed limits perhaps as maybe you and your audience has done, hey, it's a 65 mile an hour speed limit, I can go 70 or 72 and I won't get a ticket, right? After speaking with a whole bunch of engineers, I went to a conference, there were a bunch of engineers, and lot of it was way over my head, but the one thing I took away from this conference was there's a concerted effort by folks to build into the speed limit a margin of safety, a margin of error. And that means that if you go to the speed limit, you got a shot at avoiding a crash if something unforeseen happens. Conversely, if you go over the speed limit, you've thrown that margin of safety, that margin of error out the window. So I stress that a lot to kids as well.

And then we talked about it earlier, and I don't know if we'll have time, but defensive driving is so very, very important.

Travis: Yeah, no, we've got plenty of time. Let's talk about defensive driving. I mean, that's an important part of this message is you can't drive distracted because so many people, so many other people on the road are driving distracted. So it takes more from you. You know, I tell this to high school students right now.

Like, you can't drive distracted because everyone else is not everybody, but, you know, you get the point. But, you know, and when I learned how to drive, distracted driving was kind of like the extra credit question on the driving test. It wasn't a big part of it. But now, defensive driving, Joel, just seems like that's the name of the game.

Joel Feldman: So, I think being a trial lawyer like you, stories, I think, convey the message. I do talks with a man. I actually haven't done talks with him in a little while, but I did a bunch of talks with him. He would come in and he would talk about how he was driving. He had his son in the front seat.

He had the green light and a distracted driver came through the red light driving a small truck, slammed into the passenger side of his car and killed his son. And he would come in and tell that story, powerful story. We did it a bunch of times and he called me on the phone and he said, I have to apologize to you. And I said, Why? He said, I haven't been exactly straight with you about the crash.

And I said, Well, no, I looked at the police report before I'm gonna talk. I looked at the police report and made sure what it says, the crash report, and he said, Well, at the time that distracted driver killed my son and I had the green light, I wasn't looking at the road, I was also looking at my phone. And then he said to me something that I will never forget. I had the last best chance to save my son's life and I blew it because I was looking at my phone and I have to live with that.

Travis: When

Joel Feldman: we're driving, we have people in the car with us. It might be a coworker, but more often than not, it's the people who are the most important people in the world to us. How could we possibly do anything less than devote our full attention to the road, and as you said, be so aware of all the crazy people out there? A distracted driver can't be a defensive driver. We owe it to our family, we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our loved ones.

Travis: Yeah. I mean, we've all been in those scenarios. If you drive long enough, you're gonna be in situations where people are gonna run a red light, run a stop sign, they're gonna cross over, you know, the median, the little paint. I've had that situation. I I actually have that shot on a dash cam on my old car, had a dash camera and took a picture of it.

I was going around the sharp turn in this country road and the person coming the other way just hit that turn late and was drifting into my lane. And we were both going fifty, fifty five miles an hour. I had the right away, Joel. Like my family would have won that lawsuit. But I don't care.

You gotta give yourself an out as much as you can. And like you said, if you're looking at your phone or dinging around with something, you can't be in that state where you are predicting those threats and setting up a game plan for what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do if this person crosses the line? What are you gonna do if the person runs that stop You you've got to give yourself an out. And it is physically impossible to do that if you're staring at your cell phone.

Joel Feldman: So a lot of companies where I work, they've had defensive driving courses. And one big one is Smith's Rules for Safe Driving. And actually, I've used that in cases when I've had a defendant truck driver just to see if they were obeying what they learned in a course. But basically, says aim high, get a big picture, constantly scan the road, make sure that you're seen, and leave yourself an out. So let's just think about this practically.

When we're stopped and we're the first car at a red light and the light turns green, we don't go. We look to our left, we look to our right and make sure somebody's not trying to run the light, which people do. If we see kids near on the side of the road, even though we as the motorists have the right of way and they should wait at an intersection, we assume that they're gonna cross in front of us. We make predictions about what people will do wrong. We don't trust people.

We have the green light, we're going through an intersection, we slow down, we're constantly looking to the left, look to the right to make sure that person isn't on their phone and is gonna pay attention. Merging. You're on the main highway, people merge in, they're supposed to yield to you. We don't assume that they're gonna yield. We move over a lane if we can or we slow down, let them get in front of us.

I think one thing too is, let's say it's gonna take you half an hour to get someplace. I think if you can leave yourself five extra minutes, I think it takes away some of that anxiety about being late, wanting to speed, wanting to go a little faster, just to take a couple extra minutes. And again, as we said earlier, if you're using your GPS, program it when you're stopped. It could be the most dangerous thing a driver can do in terms of distraction, programming a GPS while driving.

Travis: Yeah. There is an affirmative defense in Texas to the distracted driving statute. And I forgot what it is, but it's either they allow an out for actively using it for navigation or for music. I can't remember. It's one of those two.

And I remember seeing that I'm like, what why would you put this in here? Because that is just as distracting as anything else you're doing while you're looking at your phone.

Joel Feldman: Yeah, the other thing in terms of defensive driving is following distance. Most crashes, probably in your practice, you see this most crashes are rear end collisions, and that's because the person behind was following too closely. Now, it could be that the person pulled out in front of them, the person slammed on their brakes, but if you have enough following distance, you can generally avoid those crashes. And a lot of folks will use the three second rule. You're following a vehicle and let's say they're in front of you and they pass a utility pole, a building, something that's a fixed object on the side of the road, when they're passing it, you start counting 1,001, 1,002, 1,003, and if you don't get to the same location before you finish saying three, there's enough following distance.

If you're closer to that and you don't get to three, then you're too close and you slow down a little bit and leave some room. But we have to take it upon ourselves to be those safe drivers. We have to take it upon ourselves to protect our family, those that we love, because there's so many people out there who are driving selfishly, are driving irresponsibly, and driving in a manner that quite frankly indicates that they don't really care about the people they share the road with. And I used to be one of those people. You know, I don't want to sound too high and mighty.

I used to be one of those people. I was a selfish driver and I was also a lucky driver. You think about this, many of us will equate the lack of tickets and lack of crashes with being safe drivers. There's a difference between being that safe driver and lucky driver, And there's certainly a difference between being selfless and a selfish driver.

Travis: If I get drunk at the bar and I drive home and I don't kill somebody, it's not because I was being safe, it's because I got lucky. Same thing if you're going a 100 miles an hour at a 40. If you if you don't kill somebody, you weren't being safe, you just got lucky. If you stare at your phone while you're driving and you get home safe or you get home without killing somebody, it does not mean you were safe. It just means you got lucky that once.

But if you keep doing that, if you keep driving drunk or keep speeding over and over again, or you keep staring at your phone while you're driving, it's just a matter of time this is going to catch up to you.

Joel Feldman: I'd ask my son about that because unlike me, he is a statistics guy. I said, How do I explain this to audiences? He said, Dad, I'll make it simple for you, as he always has to say. Take a period of time a year. If you're doing something that you appreciate has a little bit of risk, if nothing bad happens for the first six months and you continue doing that activity, well, clearly the likelihood that it's gonna happen is increased over that fixed period of time, whether it's a year or five years.

And that kind of makes sense, kind of makes sense. It's going to happen to us, you know, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, it's going to happen.

Travis: Yeah. What tools have you seen, Joel, to help on this issue? I mean, I have, obviously the do not disturb while driving feature. You see that some people have that turned on. I have it turned on my phone, my wife has it turned on.

And I tell kids, I love that feature. I mean, not only does it help me not drive distracted, but it's just kind of nice because it just stops my phone from dinging, people get so tired of hearing the dings on their phones all day. And it's like a little robot that works for me. It's texting people for me, I don't have to do that. And I tell young people like if you have a boyfriend or girlfriend who's constantly wondering where you are, this thing's gonna send a message for you saying, hey, I'm driving right now, leave me alone.

So it's got a lot of good features. Mean, I love it when I get a text message from my wife, and it's the do not disturb while driving automated text message. It just honestly just makes me smile because I know my wife is driving her car and she's not looking at her phone. Like she's doing everything she can to get home safely to me and the kids like and that is everything to me. And so it's something I just tell people like, is a great feature on your phone.

I think Androids have them too now. IPhones have them. They're very easy to turn on. You set it and forget it. And so I know you love that tool as well.

Are there any other tools out there? Could a parent have you seen anything where a parent can set this for their kids or like have some kind of app or feature where their kids can't be on their phones while they're driving?

Joel Feldman: Yeah, let's talk about Do Not Disturb While Driving for a moment. You have the iPhone, the Android, the Google. The US National Distracted Driving Coalition is a website, USN, national distract, USN DDC. You have to put in US or you'll get the Canada one. Had in October, we had a Do Not Disturb While Driving Day, the third annual one, and each year more and more people are using Do Not Disturb While Driving.

No matter what phone you have, there'll be a video on there and you can figure out how to put Do Not Disturb While Driving on. So that's a big part of it. If you would text me or call me when I'm driving, and I should say I have some exceptions to it. I don't talk about this with the kids, well, I do a little bit, but we don't want you to have your whole contact list being an exception. An exception is something that even if you have it set, it'll still come through.

What we suggest is maybe your spouse, your boss, if that's the kind of thing. Don't have your whole contact list. But we need to know certain things. So if my wife or son calls me or texts me, I will see it come in on the infotainment system on the screen. I don't pick it up.

What I'll do is I'll pull over to the side of the road if I think I need to. But that way I know about it and I'm not worried about what's going on with them. I don't need to hear from my law partners. I don't need to hear from other people. I don't want to hear from judges and things.

I just want to be safe. And the other part of it is, as you said, Travis, you look at the response when you texted your wife and it says, hey, you know, I'm driving. It's not safe. When I stop, I'll get back to you. It made you feel good.

That also sends a message to other people who may not be aware of do not disturb while driving. Because the reality is, if you don't have it on and a notification comes in, whether you're going to pick up your phone and look at it or you're to look it on the infotainment system if you're hooked up that way, you're going to do it. And just think about this. Do you want the person in the car next to you, when you're driving your kids, your spouse, people most important in the world to you, do you want them focused totally on the road, or do you want them to be having, even if it's with voice and that kind of stuff, do you want to be having conversations with other people, or do you want them to be focused totally on the road? And I know what the answer is, so let's just do the same for other people.

Let's do the same for other people. There's also an app called Life360. It's free, I think, unless you want some type of a report. But a lot of parents will have that. You and your kids will go into that app.

You all have it. They'll be able to see where you are. They'll be able to see if your car has stopped, if it's driving. And that makes parents feel a lot better because if you're worried about your kid and you look at the app and you see they're driving along, chances are they're okay, right? And then if you wanna text them or call them, you know, hey, I'm not gonna do it now.

And that's a conversation you need to have with your kids because, yeah, as parents, we're deathly afraid, I guess I shouldn't use that, but yeah, well, we are deathly afraid of our kids driving, distracted driving, that kind of stuff. So, you want to know that they're safe, but I've done talks with moms and dads who they were the last text that their kid tried to read before they were killed. And you don't want to be pushing them to respond to tell you that they're safe. You could work that out. What we suggest is that kids, if they're driving, let's say they drive to school, they send a text, hey mom, dad, I'm safe at school.

I'll let you know when I'm leaving. And let the kid initiate it, And then with the Life360 app, you can see where they are. That's a much better way to do it.

Travis: So don't text message people if you know they're driving, especially your kids. What about calls, Joel? If you know someone who's driving, should you call them or should you wait till they arrive at their destination?

Joel Feldman: So here's a tough issue, quite honestly. Hands free calls. A lot of people say, and well, 30 states basically have said, hey, it's fine if you wanna have a hands free call. But is it safe? And all the studies keep coming back and saying, it's safer, of course, than looking away from the road at a text, but it still causes us to lose concentration.

And there's some studies that we have this in the presentation. Basically what it comes down to is driving is cognitively demanding. Many of us really don't even think about it because we're kind of on autopilot when we drive, we're so used to it, but our brains aren't. Our brains are paying attention, doing things, we may not even be aware of it. When we add another cognitively demanding task, in this case a conversation with someone remote from the vehicle, remote from the vehicle, a hands free phone call.

It adds another level of cognitive load, your cognitive demand, and in many cases our brain gets overloaded and we shut down scanning. We have no control over it. We don't scan the road. So, what I tell people is just know don't stay on hands free calls forever. If someone calls you hands free, your wife or your spouse, your partner, whatever it is, click it.

Hey, what's up? Okay, you want me to get some milk? Fine, I'm cutting off the call because it's not safe. Boom, short, sweet, that kind of thing. People just tend to hang on those calls, those hands free calls forever.

Now, the question in ordinary comes up now is, okay, so can you talk to a passenger in the car? And actually you can. They've found the conversations with folks in the car for some reason are not that cognitively demanding and they're not that distracted with the driver. It's just when it's remote.

Travis: Yeah, and I mean, makes sense because that person in the car can sense what's going on on the roadway, like that person can stop talking if like traffic backs up or people are getting on their brakes. And so it's just it's a different scenario. But yeah, you know, I try my best to to not call like my wife. I can see if she's driving. And so I just don't try not to call her if she's driving.

It's just it's just one more thing. It's, you know, it's obviously it's not as dangerous as staring at your phone, texting and driving, social, all that kind of stuff. But it doesn't it doesn't help anything. Okay. I wanna talk about a couple more things before we go, Joel.

Kids. What advice do you have? So I've got little kids. Like, I've got I joke I got kids of all the ages, but I've got an eight and a six and a four and then we have a baby as well. So what advice do you have for parents of little kids on this issue?

Because, know, they're obviously, they're not driving yet, but they're going to be in cars with other people besides me and their mom. So when you talk to kids, what's kind of the message that you give them?

Joel Feldman: Well, we should not wait until kids are about to get their driver's license to talk to them about distracted driving. And I think parents should know that the studies show kids as young as five or six are watching us drive.

Travis: Oh, yeah.

Joel Feldman: And if we drive distracted, they're going to drive distracted. So part of the lesson needs to be be the driver you want your kid to be all the time. I have a volunteer speaker in the Pittsburgh area, good guy, he's a lawyer, good guy. He called me, I don't know, five, six, eight months ago and he said, Joel, I have to tell you something that's really embarrassing. I said, alright, Jason, what's up?

He said, we got our four or five year old little kid, it's a little Tikes is the manufacturer, a red and yellow domed car that all the kids have. You're nodding your head. Okay. Probably your audience will recognize it as well. He said, We got our son that and he had a tantrum.

He wouldn't drive it unless he had my cell phone. He wanted to drive just like daddy.

Travis: Oh gosh. Oh man.

Joel Feldman: That should give us, that's what we need to know. That's what we need to know. Our kids are learning from us. But we also have, as I talked about, I just grabbed that, I don't know how well this is gonna come across, but we have this K through two Distracted Driving picture book, Sam's Trip to the Beach. I talked about a second to fifth grade thing.

We need to create a generation of kids who will choose not to drive distracted when they get their licenses. We can't wait until we're about to drive distracted. And there are resources out there. We have a bunch. Other people have that.

So that's what we need to do. You know, if you asked any parent what's the most dangerous thing their kid would do, chances are they're going say get in the car with another teen driver or drive themselves, and that's what the facts show. You know, that's what the facts show. So we need to be taking a more proactive role, but please, please, please, I'd hope that you'd give up your driving distractions when you drive all the time, but at a minimum when your kids are in the car. You expose them to being in a crash because you're not driving defensively, and you're teaching them it's okay to drive distracted, and we can't have that.

As parents, we can and must do better.

Travis: Yeah, I think any parent knows that a kid's gonna do what you do before they do what you say to do. They're gonna model that behavior. And I also tell my kids, like, if you're in another person's car, like for a carpool or something, you know, if if Mrs. Smith is taking you to basketball and she's staring at her phone while driving, A, it is okay to speak up and say like, hey, ma'am, I don't feel safe right now. Like you've taught me to do, Joel.

B, let daddy know about it so I can deal with that information. You don't want a kid afraid to speak up and afraid to talk to you about that because we're just not going to take those chances with our kids.

Joel Feldman: And I think also I talk to the kids, I do a lot of driver's ed classes, so some have their permits, some don't, but they're not driving alone. And I talked about defensive driving, and I say, you know, you can practice being a defensive driver just by sitting in the front seat with your mom and dad. As they're going through an intersection, are they slowing down even if they have the green light? Are they looking for left to right? And I think parents can start teaching their kids about how to be defensive drivers early on, saying, you know, coming to this intersection, I have the green light.

That means I can go when I'm looking. Is that person gonna come through the light? You can start teaching your kids at an early age about that. And I think it's really important to teach them how to drive defensively, and they could learn so much, so much before they even get close to being a driver. But I think you're right.

We have to embolden, empower might be a better word, our children, that if Mrs. Smith is driving them and she's looking at her phone respectfully, and you have to be respectful, just don't feel safe when you drive me and look at your phone. And I bet you that mom is going to feel mortified. That dad will feel mortified.

Travis: Yeah, but it'll change that behavior. Going back to driver's ed, what you just mentioned, do they do a lot of distracted driving stuff in driver's ed now? Because when I talk to high school students, it seems like a lot of this, it's like the first time they've heard it.

Joel Feldman: Yeah, it is unfortunately the first time they've heard it.

Travis: Which is crazy to me. It seems like

Joel Feldman: it Even should be with all over defensive driving too, which is shocking. I mean, how do kids go through driver's ed and not learn defensive driving, distracted driving? Well, the resources are so limited. They only can do so much in the classroom, the driving time, if schools still have the ability for the kids to drive. I do a lot of work in Delaware and every school still has cars.

As a matter of fact, the only people who can certify someone under the age of 18 eligible to take their driver's test is a driver's ed instructor at a school. Mom and dad can't do that certification. Now, if you're older, you can do it differently, which I think is neat, and statistics show that while we're well intended moms and dads teaching our kids about driving, the kids who go through driver's ed or private driving schools are safer, they have less crashes.

Travis: For the private driving schools?

Joel Feldman: Yeah.

Travis: Yeah. So I think for regular driver's ed, think that's an important message for parents to keep in mind. Like, don't think that your kids are safe just because they successfully passed that course, you know. A lot of kids will do whatever it takes to get that checkbox, get their license, but they're not adequate. They're not coming out adequately trained on distracted driving.

So it takes parents getting them this kind of information, sitting out with them and talking to them about it. Joel, I'm actually think, you you and I have talked about this too. The the presentation that that we do in these schools, I'm gonna try to put one of those online so someone can just come if they can't get to one of these in person presentations. They can just watch it online and get all the stuff that you've put together completely free. I I think that'd be really powerful and easy way for parents to get this in the hands of their kids.

Also And for the parents to watch it themselves. Like you said, this isn't just about talking. This isn't just a young person issue. We see this at all age groups.

Joel Feldman: Well, I think folks that are listening to this, if they're in your area, they should reach out to you and see if you can come in and talk with the kids in their school. If they have companies, they should have you come in and talk with the folks in the company because we do have the K-one picture book, the elementary school. I'm going be going to Wisconsin next week. I've done middle school presentations in the past, quite honestly not a lot, maybe only about a dozen, but we've worked on that presentation. I had an advisory group of middle school kids working with me on it, and I'm gonna be in Wisconsin next week talking to middle school kids and high school kids.

They should have you come in and do talks.

Travis: Well, you've got 125 of us. Anybody across the country, if you want someone to come in, whether it's to your business, whether it's to your conference, to your high school. If you've got a group of people that you can get together and you want to get this message to them, Joel will make sure someone comes and delivers that message and it will save lives. Period. End of story.

Right, Joel?

Joel Feldman: Yes. Absolutely.

Travis: All right. Well, Joel, this has been fantastic. I love talking to you. I love what you're doing. I'm honored to be a very small part of it.

And I can't wait. The other thing too is just talking to young people. It's just it's a lot of fun. Like, it's it's a very serious message, but it there's so much energy. And I just I love it.

And so it's just been fun getting to know you and being a part of this. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Is there anything else? If they want to reach out to you to get a presentation or anything like that, how can people find you?

Joel Feldman: Oh, pretty simple. The organization is enddistracteddriving.org for short enddd.org. And you can find me there. It's infoenddd.org. Let me just finish with this one, Travis.

There's a video we use and I'm sure you know it. So, with my wife in it. And she talks about Casey and all and she just asked this question, and it's in a mixture of grief, frustration, probably anger. What will it take for us to change the way we drive? That's a question that each and every one of us can answer.

And if you've listened to this, you now know the answer. It's making your personal values congruent with your driving behaviors, or maybe making your driving behaviors congruent with your personal values. It's being that good role model for your children. It's recognizing that you share something with everybody on the road. You have something in common with everybody.

Every single person you see, they want to get home safely and they've got people at home who love them and want them to get home safely. And we need to do this and we can do this. We can do this.

Travis: Yeah, and we're all in this together. Awesome, Joel. Well, thank you so much. We'll talk soon. Okay.

All right. Bye. Hey there, listeners. I hope today's episode has been enlightening and inspiring. As we dive into these important conversations about safety and community, I'm reminded of why I became a personal injury lawyer in the first place.

Every day, I see people whose lives have been turned upside down because of some accident in one shape or form or another. It's a confusing, overwhelming time, and it can feel impossible to know where to turn. If you or someone you love have been in an accident and you need honest guidance, visit pattersonpersonalinjury.com to schedule a free consultation with our team. We'll get to know you, get to know your story, and answer your questions. We're gonna help you understand all of your options, all with no obligation and no pressure.

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