Dangers of Texting and Driving

Distracted driving is putting not just the driver that is doing this at risk, but also our lives. Many of us have witnessed drivers being so distracted that they go over the lines. Something must be done in order for innocent people lives not to be in danger and to make the roads safer. According to the DMV, the Florida law is enforced as a secondary offense, which means that you cannot be pulled over for texting while driving. You must being pulled over for another reason that is a primary offense in order to be ticketed for texting while driving.

There has been numerous chances for a bill to be passed that would make cell phone usage while driving a primary offense instead of a secondary offense, but it seem to never be able to get past the legislatures. In order to develop a solution to distracted driving we must take in account of families that have already been through a crisis of losing a loved on. Though texting while driving may not seem like it a serious problem, it is. People who are distracted have a greater chance of causing an accident than one who is drunk. Making distracted driving a primary offense and educating the community on the dangers of distracted driving and the impact on life would be a way to deter people from being distracted while driving, which will decrease the number of accidents.

In Florida, distracted driving has became the leading cause of accidents resulting in death or serious injury. In 2017, there has been a great number of accidents that were caused by distracted driving. Wayne Roustan stated that, “A recent study that was done by EverQuote Inc, an online insurance firm, involving drivers being scored through an EverDrive motion-sensing app that measured speeding, sudden acceleration, aggressive turning, hard braking and other movements while the driver’s phone is being used. The results suggested that 92 percent of drivers nationwide with cell phones have used them in a moving car in the past 30 days. The app logged 2.7 million vehicle trips and 230 million miles driven”.

Since distracted driving is the main reason for most accidents, many industries have noticed the need to cratell distracted driving such as cell phone makers and automakers. Cell phone makers have features where you can now disable your phone functions while driving. Automakers have the same features in the vehicles but it still has to be turned on or off by the operator, which requires discipline. There are many apps that people can download, that will stop them from being distracted while driving such as lifesaver, true motion family, at&t drive mode, and etc.

Kristen Beede explained that’ “A current study examined the effects of cognitivity distracting tasks on various measures of driving performance. Thirty-six college students with a median of 6 years of driving experience completed a driving history questionnaire and four simulated driving scenarios. The distraction tasks consisted of responding to a signal detection task and engaging in a simulated cell phone conversation. Driving performance was measured in terms of four categories of behavior: traffic violations, driving maintenance, attention lapses, and reaction time. Performance was significantly impacted in a four categories when drivers were concurrently talking on a hands-free phone. Performance on the signal detection task was poor and not significantly impacted by the phone task, suggesting that considerably less attention was paid to detected these peripheral signals. However, the signal detection task did interact with the phone task on measures of average speed, speed variability, attention lapses, and reaction time. The finding lend further empirical support of the dangers of drivers being distracted by cell phone conversation”.

Reid Goldsborough stated that “According to recent research by State Farm, more than 20 percent of drivers text or access the Internet while driving. The accident risk when taking your eyes off the road to type in text or read the screen exceeds the risks of driving while drunk”. ‘There are simple limits to our multitasking abilities,’ says Stacey Hanke, a Chicago-based management consultant. ‘We can’t safely drive a car while typing on a keyboard or reading a screen.

The human mind is simply not capable of operating this way.’ Hanke calls such behavior ‘micro-communication madness.’ She has some good advice on how to rein yourself in, if you’re one of the perpetrators: text before you drive, and try to relish your sense of completion, place your device out of reach while driving, in your handbag or briefcase, or even in the trunk, to help you resist temptation, turn off your device to keep quiet the alluring sound of an incoming text or tweet, if you can’t resist, pull off the road at a safe location or Plan to take communications breaks”.

Educating teenagers on the dangers and the impact on life

There are numerous ways that you can do this. Sherin states “Given the rising number of texting and driving teenagers, the primary target of educational campaigns and legislative opportunities by local and state government, law enforcement, schools, and health professionals should be the youngest drivers. Teenage-tailored media campaigns like television public service announcements, similar to the drug and tobacco awareness campaigns currently in use, could raise awareness of the issue of texting while driving; however, increased research on the effectiveness of such programs is also needed”.

Nobody life should be cut short because of somebody inconsiderate actions that jeopardize other lives.. Making distracted driving a primary offense and educating teenages/young adults on the dangers and the impact that it may have on their life or others. Though doing this will take time and money, i would rather see money being put in something that is going to save people lives than to see the money being used for funerals.

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