Yet Another Reason to Quit Smoking: Smoking Causes Car Accidents

Smoking Causes Car Accidents: Yet Another Reason to Quit Smoking

I'm always coming across new articles and new studies that blame smoking as the cause of just about everything. I am a nonsmoker and really don't care for the smell of cigarette smoke at all. And if I was a smoker, the big factor in getting me to quit would probably be the insanely high price of the cigs. But I do sometimes think that blaming smoking for just about everything goes a wee bit overboard.

For instance, a couple of weeks back, we updated our website with some information about prolapse repair injuries resulting from defective medical devices (surgical mesh). While researching these articles, we came across several assertions that smoking increased the risks of prolapse and urinary incontinence. But at the time, we didn't find any solid proof to support these assertions. Then, a few days later, the news reported on a university research study that clearly correlated the smokers in the study to the urinary incontinence sufferers in the study. (Though the researchers stopped short of saying that smoking actually caused the urinary incontinence.)

Today, our news feed sent over a report of a pretty serious injury car accident caused by a dropped cigarette. The accident occurred up in Grant County, OK and sent two people to the hospital. According to the report, Johnny G. Hanson, a fellow Texan out of Odessa, TX, dropped his cigarette while he was behind the wheel of his GMC pickup. When he reached for the cig to pick it back up again, he lost control of the vehicle. The GMC pickup ran off the road and flipped about 4 times before coming to rest.

Mr. Hanson had on his seat belt, so he stayed inside the vehicle and suffered only minor injuries. His passenger (Marion E. Copley, also of Odessa, TX) did not have his seat belt on. The pickup ejected him at some point during the rollovers. Mr. Copley remains hospitalized with multiple head, arm, leg and trunk injuries. The news reports say that troopers blame the wreck on driver distraction. (Yesterday, we wrote at length about the injury and fatality risks to car occupants who suffer wrecks while not wearing seat belts. The injuries can be pretty gruesome. And the fatalities are so needless, tragic and preventable.)

Idly, I looked up car accidents caused by smoking. Somewhat to my surprise, I found videos on distracted driving wrecks caused by smoking, and several web pages detailing smoking as a cause of car accidents. Some of the pages concentrated on how lighting up (or dropping or mislaying an already lit cig) distracts the driver. The driver (just like Mr. Hanson from Odessa, TX) might lose control of the vehicle immediately, or lose control when "overcorrecting" for a driving mistake made while distracted. Other articles focused on increased risks because of what you're smoking.

1. We hear a lot about the dangers of distracted driving that result from texting and cell phone use. We don't hear very much about the distracted driving dangers resulting from distracted smokers. But they do exist. Really, the two activities represent about the same kinds of distracted driving dangers:
   Drivers' hands are off the wheel, occupied with another object;
   Their attention is elsewhere; and
   Their eyes are focused on the match or the cig or the cell phone.

And, of course, driving while high on weed is DUI (driving under the influence). Depending on how "high" that influence is, your chances of a car accident, and a serious or fatal one, do increase precipitously. So, I'm going to add: "Don't drink and smoke" to my more customary admonition of: "Don't drink and drive." And let's face it, we have enough smoke in the air right now in Texas with the wildfires. Lighting up a cigarette just seems redundant. Practically the entire State is smoking right now; you don't need to add to that burden.