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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has developed a legal template that will help states develop legislation banning the act of texting behind the wheel. The sample law is modeled after the Executive Order issued by President Obama in October of last year that prohibited federal employees from texting while driving.
The Department of Transportation has announced on Tuesday new rules that ban commercial truck and bus drivers from texting while driving. The new rule is part of a growing national effort to crack down on the epidemic of distracted driving that kills 6,000 people every year and injures 500,000 more.
Raleigh, North Carolina’s News Observer published an article Sunday that illustrates with a few poignant examples the deadly distracted driving epidemic that threatens the life of nearly every American.
Distracted Driving has become the new epidemic in the United States. It’s a problem that has swept into every corner of the country, killing six thousand people every year and injuring half a million more. Unlike most epidemics, however, the only known cure for distracted driving is awareness and responsibility.
According to the Department of Transportation, every year in the United States, more than half a million people are seriously injured in traffic accidents caused by “distracted drivers.” An additional 6,000 people die in distracted-driving accidents, the latest victims of drivers whose attention was fixed on something other than the road. Distracted drivers cause one-third of all the traffic accidents on America’s roads and highways, and some safety experts say these figures are actually much higher because it’s not always possible to determine the underlying causes of many traffic accidents.
A new poll conducted by CBS and the New York Times found that almost all Americans believe that the government should outlaw texting while driving. Results of the nationwide poll, which was conducted by random telephone interview, revealed that 97 percent of Americans think texting while driving should be illegal while merely one percent felt the practice should remain legal.
President Obama signed an executive order earlier this month prohibiting federal employees from texting while driving. The new law applies to workers who use cars or phones provided by the federal government in addition to those using their own cars and phones for government business. The new legislation is part of the Obama administration’s plans to fight what has become an epidemic of distracted driving on America’s roads.
Utah set an early precedent when it recently passed some tough legislation against texting and driving. It’s a precedent that will inevitably pass in other states, whatever their political slant, because texting and driving has been revealed as an undeniably dangerous act — twice as bad as driving with the typical legal limit of alcohol in one’s blood.
Last month, we wrote about the texting-while-driving video produced by the Police Department of Gwent, Wales, a 4-minute graphic glimpse at what happens when a driver, distracted by a text message, unconsciously steers into oncoming traffic. The filmmakers posted the video to YouTube in condensed form (the entire film is 30 minutes long) simply to show a colleague, never expecting it would go viral. Within weeks, it was viewed more than 4 million times on YouTube and other web sites. The video’s instant popularity astounded everyone, but some critics wonder whether its message carried through the noise and carnage of the fictitious three-vehicle crash.
“A solid and growing body of studies shows that texting, conversing on hand-held phones or even chatting hands-free … make us dangerous drivers, as likely to get into an accident as if we were legally drunk,” says a Los Angeles Times editorial published last week. Many states and municipalities have tackled the scourge of cell phone-talking drivers with legislation aimed at reducing the rising tide of cell-phone related driving accidents, but what to do with cell phone-texting drivers?
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