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Texting while driving poses dire traffic safety threat
July 30th, 2009 by Kurt Niland
A freelance photographer was working on assignment for the New York Times, covering an H.I.V. scare at a St. Louis high school and trying to build a rapport with teenagers involved with the story. Sitting in the back seat of a car, photographer Dan Gill happened to snap a picture of the teenage driver texting on her cell phone while driving about 60 miles per hour, both hands off the wheel, as someone in the front passenger seat steered. Gill didn’t intentionally seek such a controversial picture. It was just one of the scores of photographs he took in documenting the daily lives of some teenagers.
But that picture illustrates the latest and greatest traffic safety problem today – texting while driving. Studies consistently reveal that drivers who text messages on their cell phones perform as poorly behind the wheel as drunk drivers … if not worse.
Texting is a generational phenomenon. While adults send text messages occasionally or even frequently, texting generally isn’t as pervasive a habit as it is with teenagers. A survey of young drivers conducted by the National Organizations for Youth Safety and the Allstate Foundation found that nearly 70 percent of teenagers admit to texting while driving. That figure suggests a 20 percent increase in the number of texting teens since last summer, when surveys indicated about 50 percent of teens confessed to texting behind the wheel.
The distraction of texting while driving is hazardous in itself. Add lack of driving experience to that formula and the potential for disaster is significantly greater. A recent study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that experienced truck drivers were 23 times more likely to crash when texting (worse than being intoxicated), and has stated that the findings were also applicable to drivers of light vehicles and cars. Some safety experts expect future tests to conclude that relatively inexperienced drivers are actually more likely to crash than experienced truck drivers while texting behind the wheel.
The problem has become serious enough to spur many senators to call for state-level bans on texting and driving for people of all ages. Citing the need to reduce driving distractions and curb highway deaths and injuries, lawmakers this week proposed slashing federal highway funds for any states that remain unwilling to adopt measures against texting while driving.
Sources:
http://parentingteens.suite101.com/article.cfm/teen_driver_menace_textmessaging
