One Split Second

Foreword by U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar

"Vijay Dixit’s book is an important contribution toward raising awareness about the dangers of distracted driving. For the Dixit family, the issue is personal. Vijay lost his daughter, Shreya, to a distracted driver on November 1, 2007. She was only 19 years old. Such tragedy would sideline many, but Vijay pushed forward and made it his life’s mission to end distracted driving and prevent other families from going through what his family has endured.

Drawing on the expertise from those in the field, including safety professionals and researchers, the latest facts and figures, and personal stories, Vijay has created a comprehensive guide to distracted driving and potential solutions. He explores how technology, education, and laws can change our behavior and improve safety. He offers an original framework for student-led distraction-free driving advocacy clubs in high schools to help teens learn responsible driving behaviors. I commend Vijay for launching clubs in three Minnesota high schools in 2015 and setting them up to achieve measurable goals.

Over the years I have met with families across the country-including the Dixits-who have lost loved ones when a driver took his or her eyes off the road. Their heartbreaking stories remind us that distracted driving is a matter of life and death. Whether it is texting with a friend, searching for music files, or typing directions into the GPS, distracted driving is putting drivers, passengers, and pedestrians at risk. It only takes a moment of distracted driving to cause a tragedy. Five seconds is the average time a driver’s eyes are off the road while texting. For a driver traveling at 55 miles per hour, that’s like covering the length of a football field blindfolded.

No text message is worth dying for.

In the age of smartphones, distracted driving is playing an outsized role and endangering everyone on the road. Every day, nine people are killed and more than 1,100 people are injured in the United States in crashes involving distracted driving. Nearly half of all U.S. high school students aged 16 or older admitted to texting or emailing behind the wheel.

More must be done to quell this epidemic that is sweeping the country. That is why I worked with U.S. Senators John Hoeven (R-ND), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to introduce bipartisan legislation to crack down on distracted driving in Minnesota and across the country. In 2014, millions of dollars in federal grant money that was designated to reduce distracted driving went unused because of overly stringent qualifications. Our bipartisan legislation would make it easier for states that are taking steps to curb distracted driving to qualify for these federal grants to support their efforts.

We’ve pushed this legislation for years, and finally our hard work paid off. Our legislation was included in the long-term, bipartisan transportation bill-the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act-that Congress passed and the President signed into law on December 3, 2015.

The FAST Act moves us ahead by investing in our infrastructure, creating jobs, and improving safety. It only happened because many people-from different backgrounds and political beliefs-were willing to work together to get it done. This is also what it will take to make distracted driving as taboo as drunk driving. We need to join forces to let every current and future driver know that someone who texts and drives is just as impaired as someone who drinks and drives.

I believe that drivers of all ages, especially parents, teenagers, teachers, school administrators, driving instructors, and agency officials, will benefit from this book. The title, One Split Second, says it all: Our lives can be changed forever or lost in the blink of an eye if we drive distracted."

Vijay Dixit is a management and business process design consultant who has worked in the IT, health insurance, and energy industries. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, he moved to the United States in 1974 to do graduate work in clean technologies and business management. After losing their daughter Shreya to a distracted driver in 2007, Vijay and his wife Rekha established the Shreya R. Dixit Memorial Foundation to conduct awareness and education campaigns in the states of Minnesota and Connecticut. In addition to his advocacy work with the foundation, Vijay drew on his engineering background to pioneer the development of the world's first Adaptive Massive Open Online Course (aMOOC) for combating distracted driving. Vijay and Rekha live in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.