Join the Race against Distracted Driving on June 11
The Miss South Dakota Organization, State Farm Insurance and the South Dakota Safety Council are sponsoring a 1 mile walk / 5 K run to call attention to the issue of distracted driving, and to educate and ultimately change behaviors.
Before the race start, former Miss South Dakota and current State Senate Transportation Chair Shantel Krebs, 2010 Miss South Dakota Loren Vaillancourt, and others will speak about distracted driving. Then three South Dakota K-12 schools will each be presented with a $5,000 State Farm “Drive the Dollars” grant check for their anti-distracted driving campaigns – two schools are from the Black Hills area and one is from eastern South Dakota. The race is a great opportunity for people to come together for a common purpose: decrease the number of crashes and save lives. All proceeds of the race will go to distracted driving awareness programs.
All race participants will receive a t-shirt provided by Sioux Falls Cadillac; a coupon for a free Otter App, an application for smart phones that reduces texting while driving hazards; and other items provided by State Farm. The race winner will receive a free pair of shoes from the Runner’s Block and there will be prizes drawn at the end of the walk.
To register for the race, go to www.allsportcentral.com and search for the race by title or date. Cost to participate is $5 per person, $15 for families (limit of 5) and $30 for teams (limit of 10). Participants may visit the Runner’s Block at 4827 South Louise Ave. on Friday, June 10, to register in person (cash or check only) and pick up a race day packet. Registration is available the day of the race at Howard Wood, accepting cash or check only.
Interviews with Loren Vaillancourt, Shantel Krebs, the South Dakota Safety Council, State Farm and students from the three winning schools will be available just after the start of the race. For information on the race details or for interview inquiries, please contact Diane Hall from SDSC. For information on Miss South Dakota, the three grant-winning schools or interview inquiries, please contact Melissa Paulik from State Farm.
Every 26 seconds is how often a car crash involving drivers using a cell phone or texting occurs in the United States. In other words, an estimated 636,000 car crashes are caused by cell phone use and texting annually, according to the National Safety Council.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 80 percent of all collisions are due to driver inattentiveness, like texting while driving. Nationally each year, texting while driving is estimated to cause:
A 2009 study from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute showed on average, drivers took their eyes off the road 4.6 seconds at a time while texting. At 55 mph, this equates to traveling the length of a football field. Text-messaging drivers are six times more likely to get into an accident than drivers who do not text. (Human Factors, Dec. 2009).
State Farm insures more cars and homes than any other insurer in the U.S., is the leading insurer of watercraft and is also a leading insurer in Canada. Our 17,800 agents and more than 66,000 employees serve 81 million policies and accounts – more than 79 million auto, fire, life and health policies in the United States and Canada, and nearly 2 million bank accounts. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company is the parent of the State Farm family of companies. State Farm is ranked No. 34 on the Fortune 500 list of largest companies. For more information, please visit statefarm.com® or in Canada statefarm.ca®.
About the South Dakota Safety Council
The South Dakota Safety Council, founded in 1949, is a non-governmental, not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life in South Dakota by preventing unintentional injuries and deaths.
The Miss America Organization is one of the nation's leading achievement programs and the world's largest provider of scholarship assistance for young women. Last year, the Miss America Organization and its state and local organizations made available more than $45 million in cash and scholarship assistance.
