"Stop texting me while you're driving!"

Driving consist of having your hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, and being alert and having extreme caution. Although in this day in age, our society has adopted many new devices that give us a new way to stay connected with those around us. And sometimes people take these devices and abuse their usage to the point where they put themselves in danger.

On October 1, 2009 President Obama signed an executive order stating that federal employees would not be allowed to text and drive. “The order covers federal employees when they are using government-provided cars or cell phones and when they are using their own phones and cars to conduct government business. Separately, the federal government plans to ban text messaging by bus drivers and truckers who travel across state lines, and may also preclude them from using cell phones while driving, except in emergencies.”(NY Times) This is a great start to have text messaging being banned to better our world, but how far will they go to ensure that it is completely banned?

I find that in our world today, it would become increasingly harder and harder to ban something as subtle as this. I can understand the whole “no talking on your phone when driving,” because you can clearly see when someone is talking on their phone, unless they have the headset. Seven states have already banned hand held cell phones. And even though seventeen states and D.C. have banned texting and driving, it brings out more and more questions of how can you tell this act is being done.

Although, the major question now, is not how can you tell, but it should be why is Obama saying it is just for the federal employees? Federal employees are mainly made up of adults, and the vast majority of the people texting and driving would be the teenage generation. This is mainly because cell phones and texting was introduced as brand new to our generation and became increasingly popular to do, where as for the adults it was something new to adapt to. It doesn’t only take an adult to take their eyes off the road for two seconds to cause an accident, but also teenagers. Although, Obama added that the order to restrict text messaging by federal employees behind the wheel “sends a very clear signal to the American public that distracted driving is dangerous and unacceptable.” (NY Times) This statement I do not agree with at all. It could send out the message but who is going to actually take a step back and look at the whole situation and the effects that could happen. Many people just bypass the whole warning as it wasn’t meant for them. Even though it is not just teenagers that will text and drive, it has been a proven fact that teenagers have held a record high that while texting and driving, the probable accident ration has jumped twenty-three times more than it has ever been.

This whole situation is a feel good noble prize winner. There is no specific way to know how this banning of texting while driving is going to affect people. Simply banning texting “makes people feel good and makes it look like you’re doing something, but you’re not tackling the more difficult problem,” said David Strayer, a professor at the University of Utah who studies distracted driving. “It misses the larger point.” (NY Times) That larger point that we should be looking at, goes along with the distractions of the cell phone. Even though the more dangerous situation is texting while driving, talking on the phone as well can create larger problems. Distractions come in all ways; this tends to be one of the number causes of accidents, aside from drunk driving.

Overall, cell phones were introduced as a way to connect with other people. Usage of the cell phone, however, has been increasingly abused in the sense that in certain situations we depend solely on it even when the timing isn’t the greatest. Cell phone usage should just be banned all together while in a vehicle to make a clearly painted picture and not leave and smudged lines in the middle for people to find a way around. They haven’t always been a series of dangerous events, it is the way people handle the cell phones now-a-days. I believe that Obama is taking the a great step in the right direction to ban texting while driving but sooner or later it’s going to need to be extended to overall usage in a vehicle. Our world is getting more and more dangerous by the day, and the only way to make sure we are all safe is to just take it all away.







Britni Armstrong