The Dallas News did an interview with Dallas based AT&T about an upcoming Distracted Driving Summit which will be held in Washington DC. The talking point of this summit will be texting while driving. Chairman and CEO of AT&T, Randall Stephenson, said, “Our goal is to send a simple, yet vital, message to all wireless users: Don’t text and drive.” A study conducted by the Virginia Technical Transportation Institute showed that texting while driving makes people 23 times more likely to get into a crash or near-crash situation. The national average for all ages of people for texting while driving is approximately 26.4 percent. The number jumps to 58 percent nationally when only interviewing teenagers. One method to be explored would require states to institute a law making texting while driving illegal in order to continue to receive federal highway funding.
Texting while driving is a problem and will continue to be a problem no matter what measures we take. It’s somewhat ironic that text messaging was initially introduced to give customers a way of communicating that would not immediately interrupt them in case one party was busy at the time. They could respond when they were available. Now this service that was introduced for convenience is causing a serious safety issue because people don’t have the self discipline to set their phones down while they’re driving. I cannot tell you how many vehicles I have stopped that were swerving from lane to lane, thinking the driver was hammered, only to find a young girl still texting as I approached the vehicle. Sorry ladies but in my experience it’s been the girls guilty of this one. The organizations involved with the upcoming summit have explored creating public service announcements and placing bill boards and placing warnings inside new cellular telephones when they are sold. These are all good ideas but ideas that won’t work. I’ve never known anybody to change their life from a public service commercial. The commercials usually have a good message but people are set in their ways. These methods show that the powers that be are concerned about the problem but ultimately are a waste of money. On the other end of the spectrum, they have explored requiring new laws against texting while driving. This is not going to immediately curb the problem either. Be honest with yourselves, are you going to quit texting behind the wheel because a law says you can’t? Do you not speed because a law says you can’t? The only thing a law will do is give law enforcement a method of punishment when this activity is causing a problem. I’m not fond of giving police yet something else to monitor but I fear that will be the only way. As a general rule people are not self disciplined enough to change their behavior merely because someone tells them something is somewhat dangerous. The only other issue I have with this proposed law is the verbage. Members of the trucking industry have already lobbied to have commercial long-haul vehicles excluded from this law saying they have computers in their cabs for business communications. This really makes me wonder what this law is going to include. Cellular telephones? Any electronic communications? I have no problem with truck drivers having computers in their cabs as long as that computer is only capable of communicating with the company and displaying the global positioning information which they use. Because there is nothing that makes truck drivers any better at driving than a 16 year old. You would think being on the road all that time would actually improve their skills but not the case. I’ve seen some texting teenagers that drive better than some truck drivers. I can think of many different reasons to need a computer or communications terminal in your vehicle. Law enforcement use them regularly. Fire and EMS services use them as well. Crutial information about patients or merely directions to a call are all available at their fingertips. I feel the pros outweigh the cons in their situation.
I will be interested to hear the proposed method to tackle this problem following the summit. As with anything government related, we probably will have another year of planning only to institute a plan that will not work.
Nice use of graphics at the end of the post!
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