Essay on Texting and Driving

Essay on Texting and Driving

Essay on Texting and Driving
What do you think about texting and driving? Should it be Legal to use a Hand-Free Device while driving?
The scientific literature on the dangers of driving while sending a text message from a mobile phone, or driving while texting, is limited but growing. A systematic review study at the Queensland University of Technology Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety-Queensland CARRS-Q found that visual-manual interactions such as texting and browsing have a detrimental effect on a number of safety-critical driving measures.[5] Specifically, negative effects were seen in detecting and responding correctly to road signs, detecting hazards, time spent with eyes off the road, and (only for sending text messages) lateral position. Mean speed, speed variability, lateral position when receiving text messages, and following distance showed no difference.[6] A separate, yet unreleased simulation study at the University of Utah found a sixfold increase in distraction-related crashes when texting.[7]
The low number of scientific studies may be indicative of a general assumption that if talking on a mobile phone increases risk, then texting also increases risk, and probably more so. 89% of U.S. adults think that text messaging while driving is “distracting, dangerous and should be outlawed”.[8] The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has released polling data that show that 87% of people consider texting and e-mailing while driving a “very serious” safety threat, almost equivalent to the 90% of those polled who consider drunk driving a threat. Recently,[when?] AAA released a study showing texting while driving is six times more likely to cause an accident than drunk driving.[9]

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Despite the acknowledgement of the dangers of texting behind the wheel, about half of drivers 16 to 24 say they have texted while driving, compared with 22 percent of drivers 35 to 44.[10] A survey of more than 90 teens from more than 26 high schools throughout

the United States conducted by Liberty Mutual Insurance Group in 2006 showed that 46% of students consider texting to be either “very” or “extremely” distracting.[11] An American Automobile Association study showed that 34% of teens (age 16–17) admitted to being distracted behind the wheel because of texting and 40% of American teens say they have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put people in danger.[12] A study involving commercial vehicle operators conducted in September 2009 concluded that though incidence of texting within their data set was low, texting while driving increased the risk of accident significantly.[13]
Texting while driving received greater attention in the late 2000s, corresponding to a rise in the number of text messages being sent.[10] The 2008 Will Smith movie Seven Pounds deals with Smith’s character committing suicide in order to donate his organs to help save the lives of seven people to make up for the seven people he killed in a car accident because he was receiving a text message while he was driving. Texting while driving attracted interest in the media after several highly publicized car crashes were caused by texting drivers, including a May 2009 incident involving a Boston trolley car driver who crashed while texting his girlfriend.[14] Texting was blamed in the 2008 Chatsworth train collision which killed 25 passengers. Investigations revealed that the engineer of that train had sent 45 text messages while operating. Despite these incidents, texting was still on the rise.

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