Why texting while driving should be banned – worse than driving drunk
By Dave Parrack
Automobiles will likely never be 100 percent safe, unless flying cars and auto-pilot controls become standard in the future. Which could be a long way off. But there are ways of reducing the risks to drivers, passengers, other road users, and pedestrians. No driving while drunk is one already enforced, banning texting while driving is surely another.
Everyone knows the risks associated with combining alcohol and automobiles, and all sensible people stay within the laws to avoid not only getting in trouble with the law but also causing death and destruction on the road. The link between being drunk in charge of a vehicle and accidents is proven and well known. The link between using mobile phones while driving and accidents is only now being truly explored.
Last September saw a study carried out in the U.K. by The Transport Research Laboratory. The results of this study showed texting while driving was actually more dangerous than driving while under the influence of alcohol. Or drugs for that matter. Reaction times lessened by 35 percent, 12 percent, and 21 percent respectively.
Now, according to The New York Times, a similar study has been carried out in the States by Car and Driver magazine. The reaction time (while driving at 35 mph) of one the testers was around 0.57 seconds under normal circumstances. Add in alcohol (”the legal driving limit of 0.08 percent blood-alcohol content”) and the reaction time increased to 0.64 seconds. Which is bad enough. But when texting, the reaction time rose to 1.36 seconds. Which is truly terrible, and could prove to have fatal consequences.
Obviously, getting absolutely drunk out of your mind and then driving home would still be worse than writing a text while driving. But these results add further weight to the evidence showing texting while driving is really not very sensible.
The practice is already illegal in the U.K., some other countries, and even some states in America, but a blanket ban should surely now be pushed for. Texting, or using a cellphone in any other way, is currently just a breach of common sense, whereas it really should be outlawed in order to encourage people to stop doing it.
The full results of this study can be viewed on the Car and Drive magazine Web site.
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June 28th, 2009
How sad it is to have to create a law aginst this sort of thing. Perhaps a vow to cede your first born to the State if you ever violate this common sense approach would be appropriate? Perhaps a robotic control in all vehicles that, should the driver be texting, will shut down the engine, prevent restart and call the police to hand out a ticket in the range of, say $25,000 for the first offense, with geometric fines as the number of one’s violations grow.
For one thing, that might end the short fall some states consistently have due to their pork barreling.
Or we could, for various degrees of violations, remove a lung, kidney, or other anatomical parts to be used to repair those victims who need these parts due to a texting driver causing a smashup?
June 28th, 2009
What is truly sad is that there are inconsiderate folks that are so stupid as to text/email while driving. There is simply NOTHING so important you can’t pull your lazy ass off to the side of the road and test your eyeballs out. And then shut the stupid thing off before you pull back into traffic.
June 29th, 2009
Besides the morons who do text and email while driving, it’s amazingly dumb that we’re considering additional laws to ban it.
We already have laws against it. It’s called “distracted driving” and/or “reckless driving”. They cover it just like they cover it for cell phone usage in general. They’re good laws in that they are not specific to any one set of technologies. They stand the test of time. Texting while driving laws will be out of favor in a year or two when speech-to-text or some other tech takes over and actual typing becomes passe.
Write your legislature and tell them we don’t need them to be members of the Department of Redundancy Department. What we need is enough police on the roads to enforce the laws that have already been enacted.
July 2nd, 2009
You bunch of dumbshits!
While there are people out there who don’t see the clear risks inherent in cell phone use while driving, we will always need to legislate specifically for it.
It’s no good banging on about common sense, because it actually isn’t all that common.
Take it from me, as a paramedic who regularly scrapes broken people out of their smashed up cars: you have to have sledgehammer laws to that the fuckwits don’t get any excuses.
July 13th, 2009
Well, that was a mature response. Tell us, o person without a name, how well will new anti-texting laws be enforced when the existing laws (that already cover texting) aren’t enforced?