texting and driving

Naomi Lunkuse
Amanda Johnson
English 111
11/14/2013
Texting and driving Every second an eye is kept off the road something drastic can happen .For a long time texting and driving has been discussed among the public. It has been found to be increasing with very harsh consequences. Many families have lost their loved ones to texting and driving and hope you are not among and never will be. This issue has brought national attention in the past and still does every single day. We know that phones are necessary, but when it comes to using them while driving it has been disastrous. You would wonder if maybe we should go back to the old days when phones were only inside the building or booths. But again texting has made life much easier in communicating and we all know that, the question remains why is it making life hard, miserable and disastrous on the road? Should we put a big stop sign in the cars saying no texting and driving? The driver is the solution to the problem. Many solutions have been proposed and all have not been successful so far but the battle goes on. There are many solutions suggested. An application can be developed that disables the driver’s texting on the phone so as to stop the driver from receiving or sending text messages. We have seen movements from AT&T emphasizing that “texting can wait, asking people to be advocates helping spread the dangers of texting and driving and also” which is promising. In this case the driver decides to turn on the driving mode on the phone which automatically disables the phone from sending and receiving texts. Hefty fines can be given to violators. Drivers can learn not to text if they know the outcomes such as these huge fines are coming their way. Drivers especially teenagers should be subjected to intensive driver’s education on this issue. Teenagers should know the dangers of driving and texting. Simulators can be used to show drivers how texting is very distracting. Every second a driver keeps the eye off the road, something can happen. Text to speech programs can be built into vehicles help users to text while driving, by simply talking to their phones. This helps the driver to keep his eyes on the road rather than looking at their phone. This may not as accurate but with time it can become better. Many have heard of the programmer it works great, using SIRI it doesn’t hurt anyone but driving while texting kills and not only the driver, but everyone else out there on the road is in danger. A new campaign has been launched to help teenagers to stop texting while driving “stop the texts, stop the wrecks”, it has posted tips on how one can avoid texting and driving by borrowing thumbs from a friend where by a passenger gets the privilege of texting while the car is in motion. Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna thinks that the number is acceptable and he hopes that the new ads will do what the law enforcement alone cannot. He continues to say that “we have to get people to decide within their families and for themselves that they’re not going to adopt this bad habit” A ban on texting and driving has been imposed in the 19 states and District of Columbia, more so
Seven states have banned the use of handheld devices while driving, since it distracts drivers visually manually and cognitively. The department of transportation has announced federal guidelines to
Prohibit texting by drivers of commercial vehicles like buses and trucks. However it’s one’s choice on whether they want to use their phones or not for example if the traffic lights turn red and a person decides to check their phone it sounds fair and besides they're other causes of abstraction that lead to accidents apart from texting and driving like taking alcohol, depression, eating reaching for objects. Laws can be enforced but it’s the driver to be more careful when driving to avoid destructions in order to save a life.

Work cited http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/22/autos/texting_while_driving/