Delaware car accident lawyer, Ben Schwartz, talks about Snapchat and urges drivers to put down the smartphone while driving.

TRANSCRIPT:

I’m Attorney Ben Schwartz.

Today, I want to talk to you about a new social media app. I’m over 40, and I have no business being on Snapchat. But I am. I really think it’s awesome! You can take pictures or videos of yourself; you can apply filters and send them to your friends on Snapchat. You can do something called a ChatStorm and tell a story through short videos.

However, I want to talk to you and let you know a few things: if your kids or your grandkids are on Snapchat, you must tell them not to use it while driving. There is a lawsuit pending right now against Snapchat.
When you take a short video of yourself, you can overlay a filter onto the video. Kids and young adults are taking videos of themselves using a filter that will tell how fast their phones are moving. If a person is in a car going a hundred miles an hour, that person can have a video of him or herself driving with a banner over the top of the video telling everyone, “Hey, I’m in the car and I’m going 100 miles per hour!”

Snapchat is mainly used by teenagers as they are driving around. Some teenagers are taking video as they are driving at incredibly excessive rates of speed. They put the filter over the video. They send it out to their friends and say, “Hey, check out what I’m doing! This is really cool!” Well, it’s really not cool. Anytime you’re driving, you want to put your cell phone down. Don’t use Snapchat; don’t use any social media apps. Don’t watch videos, and don’t create videos. Don’t take pictures of yourself while you’re driving.

There’s a lot of cool stuff out there, especially if you have an iPhone. If you’re like me, this kind of thing really blows your mind. I remember when I was a kid, we didn’t even have answering machines. If you were out in the yard and you heard the phone ring in the house, you just let it ring. If you didn’t pick up, whoever was calling would just call back. We eventually got answering machines and voicemail. Now, we have iPhones! With it, I can take videos of myself, send it to people – and they can send videos right back. It’s mind-blowing to me that we have this technology, but at the same time we have a responsibility to ourselves and the people around us. We need to make sure we are all also using technology responsibly.

I’m Attorney Ben Schwartz. If you are on Snapchat, don’t use it while driving. If you have kids or grandkids, nieces or nephews, neighborhood kids on Snapchat, help them out. You can also get off Snapchat! Put it down while you’re driving. Put your phone away and be safe out there.

Ben Schwartz is the Managing Partner of Schwartz & Schwartz, Attorneys at Law. If you are searching online for a personal injury attorney, please contact Ben about your case. Ben and the other attorneys in the firm represent people who have been injured in car accidents, tractor-trailer and bus accidents, motorcycle accidents, slip-and-fall accidents, and dog bites. We have offices in Havertown (suburban Philadelphia), PA, Wilmington, DE and Dover, Delaware. Click the “Contact Us” button above and see if we can help you today!

Source Article: http://www.cbsnews.com/live/video/car-crash-leads-to-snapchat-lawsuit