Most of us have done it. You pull up to a red light, your foot goes on the brake—and your hand reaches for the cell phone beside you. But next time you start to text or check your messages at a stop light, you may want to think twice about the laws for using a mobile device at a traffic light. Is texting at a red light really illegal? And what happens if you use your phone at a red light in Maryland?

After you’ve been in a car accident, you might turn to social media to update your friends and family about what happened so that you can alert everyone in one place. This makes sense—you just want to get the message out there so that you don’t have to update everyone individually and let them know you’re okay. But actually, this could end up hurting you in the long run.

Conversations about car accidents usually revolve around distracted driving or drunk driving, but what about drowsy driving? Fatigue and exhaustion behind the wheel can be just as dangerous as distractions and intoxication. Considering that when you’re sleepy and trying to do any other task it can be more difficult to concentrate, the same thing happens when you’re behind the wheel, and it’s incredibly more dangerous.

We’ve known the rules since childhood—red means stop and green means go. Yellow means the light is about to turn red. But what does a flashing yellow light mean? According to the Maryland Department of Transportation, a flashing yellow traffic light at an intersection means you should slow down and proceed with caution. Drivers facing a flashing yellow light are permitted by law to proceed through the intersection without stopping. But defensive driving is good practice, especially in situations like these when other drivers can’t always be trusted to adhere to traffic safety rules.

Car accidents happen every hour of every day in the United States. Many of them are fatal. According to the National Safety Council, over 40,000 people died in motor vehicle accidents in 2020. In Maryland alone, we see more than our share of car accidents—both fatal and non-fatal.

When you’re driving, you expect the road to be in good condition so that you don’t have any unexpected problems. But roads aren’t always properly maintained, or sometimes other factors have caused wear and poor conditions, like bad weather. These poor road conditions could lead to serious accidents.

Although it is well-known that drunk and impaired driving causes thousands of unnecessary deaths and injuries each year, many people still choose to ignore the consequences and get behind the wheel when they are unfit to drive. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), roughly 28 people die every day in the U.S. in crashes involving drunk drivers. And in the state of Maryland alone, the statistics are tragically high. State law makes it illegal to drive with a blood alcohol content (BAC) at or above 0.08%, and there is a zero-tolerance policy for drivers under the age of 21. However, between 2009 and 2018, there were 1,515 people killed in crashes involving an alcohol-impaired driver in Maryland.

Substantial research has shown that cell phone use while driving is one of the leading causes of accidents on the road. Some studies have even concluded that the impairments associated with mobile phone use behind the wheel can be as extreme as those associated with drunk driving. Drivers who neglect their duty to keep themselves and others safe on the road put everyone at risk. In the state of Maryland, it is illegal to use a handheld phone while driving.

According to research conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), crashes involving stopped or disabled vehicles have been responsible for hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries over the past several years. Today, on average, 300 people are killed each year as a result of stopped-vehicle accidents. This statistic is particularly alarming in light of the fact that there has been an over 25% increase in stopped-vehicle accident-related deaths since 2014.

Tunnel vision, also known as peripheral vision loss (PVL), impairs your peripheral vision capability, or your ability to see to the side. People who are experiencing tunnel vision may say that they feel as though they are looking at the world through a tube. For this reason, tunnel vision is sometimes referred to as tubular vision. Like highway hypnosis, another visual phenomenon which may occur while driving, tunnel vision can come on suddenly and seemingly without cause, creating a dangerous situation and increasing the likelihood of a car accident.