Meyers Personal Injury Law | January 26, 2026 | Car Accidents
Car accidents remain a serious problem across Tennessee. Among the most common causes are texting while driving and drunk driving—two behaviors that significantly impair a driver’s ability to operate a vehicle safely. While both are widely recognized as dangerous, people often debate which one poses the greater risk.
Understanding why they are compared—and how they differ—helps clarify the dangers they pose to everyone on the road.
The Shared Risk: Impaired Driving Ability
Texting and drunk driving are comparable because both interfere with the core skills required for safe driving. Operating a vehicle safely depends on constant attention, coordination, and judgment. When any of these are compromised, the likelihood of a serious crash rises sharply.
Both behaviors:
- Reduce reaction time
- Impair situational awareness
- Increase the chance of high-speed or intersection collisions
- Are entirely preventable
From a safety perspective, the result is the same: drivers fail to respond to changing traffic conditions, sudden stops, or unexpected hazards.
How Texting While Driving Impairs Motorists
Texting while driving is uniquely dangerous because it combines multiple forms of distraction at once. A driver who sends or reads a text is no longer fully engaged with the task of driving.
Texting causes:
- Visual distraction, when the driver looks away from the road
- Manual distraction, when at least one hand leaves the steering wheel
- Cognitive distraction, when attention shifts to the phone instead of traffic
Even a brief glance at a phone can prevent a driver from noticing a stopped vehicle, a pedestrian, or a changing traffic signal. Because these distractions occur suddenly, texting-related crashes often happen without warning.
How Alcohol Impairs Driving
Drunk driving affects motorists differently but no less dangerously. Alcohol is a depressant that slows brain function and interferes with coordination and judgment.
Alcohol impairment can:
- Slow reaction time
- Blur vision and depth perception
- Reduce coordination and balance
- Encourage risky behaviors such as speeding or ignoring traffic signals
Unlike texting, which causes momentary lapses in attention, alcohol impairment can last for hours and affect every aspect of driving. This prolonged impairment increases the risk of lane departures, head-on collisions, and failure to avoid obvious hazards.
Crash Consequences and Public Safety Impact
Both distracted driving and drunk driving continue to cause serious injuries and fatalities across Tennessee. While drunk driving has long been tracked through blood alcohol testing, distracted driving is often underreported, making direct comparisons difficult. Still, both behaviors remain major contributors to preventable crashes.
Accidents involving impaired drivers frequently result in:
- Broken bones and fractures
- Traumatic brain injuries
- Spinal cord injuries and paralysis
- Internal organ damage
- Long-term soft tissue injuries
These injuries can require extensive medical treatment and prolonged recovery, disrupting victims’ lives long after the crash itself.
Is One More Dangerous Than the Other?
Determining whether texting while driving or drunk driving is more dangerous is not a matter of choosing one over the other. Both behaviors significantly increase the risk of serious crashes, but they do so in different ways.
Texting often leads to sudden, high-impact collisions because a driver’s eyes and attention are diverted without warning, leaving little time to brake or react. In contrast, drunk driving creates a more prolonged form of impairment. Alcohol slows reaction time, clouds judgment, and encourages risky behavior for extended periods.
From a safety standpoint, experts focus less on ranking the behaviors and more on their outcomes: both create foreseeable, preventable dangers and are treated as serious threats to public safety.
Contact Meyers Personal Injury Law for Help After a Car Accident in Nashville
Texting while driving and drunk driving are compared not because they are identical, but because they produce similarly dangerous outcomes. Each compromises a driver’s ability to process information, respond to hazards, and make safe decisions behind the wheel.
If you’ve been injured in a car accident in Tennessee caused by a drunk or distracted driver, contact Meyers Personal Injury Law. We offer a free consultation with a Nashville car accident lawyer, so you can learn more about your rights and options.
If you were injured in an accident in Nashville or Brentwood and need legal help, contact our Nashville personal injury lawyers at Meyers Personal Injury Law to schedule a free case review today.
Meyers Personal Injury Law Nashville
1308 Rosa L Parks Blvd Suite 101, Nashville, TN 37208
(615) 258-9000
