Texting And Driving: The Consequences Of Distracted Driving

The problem I am addressing today is that the privilege to operate a motor vehicle is being recklessly abused by the people of our society. America today as we all should know has an unhealthy obsession with the use of technology, more so their cell phones. People drive distracted every day and it is nothing to just brush aside. . There are many facts and statistics on how this is a critical subject of matter. Whether you think it is a big deal or not, you should consider the consequences. The common age group being found related to distracted driving crashes are said to be around 24 years and younger. More so because of so many newly and unexperienced teenage drivers. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study

Texting and driving involves all three types so you can predict the outcome isn’t too much in our favor (Distracted Driving, 2015). According to the National Safety Council (NDC), the big myth today is that people are capable of multitasking, and even worse multitask while driving, but in fact, the human brain cannot do such a thing. People may be walking and chewing gum at the same time, but that is because those actions involve both a thinking task, and a non-thinking task. Driving and talking on the phone at the same time is risky though because it requires both to be used. Instead of attending to both actions simultaneously, the brain quickly shifts between two cognitive activities (The Great Multitasking, 2010). Taken from a new report from the NSC ,drivers that tend to talk on cell phones often enter a state of what is called “inattention blindness” and when this occurs, they may fail to see up to 50 percent of what is ahead of them (NSC Looks Inside, 2010). The United States Department of Transportation says, "text messaging while driving creates a crash risk 23 times higher than driving while not distracted,” (Distracted Driving, 2015). That makes driving

Distraction.gov, a website that is dedicated to providing statistics and research on distracted driving, was launched by the Secretary of LaHood and the U.S. Department of Transportation. To raise awareness to the public and the media on how dangerous the use of texting and cell phones while driving are in general, they hosted two national distracted driving summits in 2009 and 2010. On September 30, 2009, President Obama issued an executive order prohibiting federal employees from texting while driving on government business or with government equipment (Distracted Driving, 2015. The number of state legislatures debating measures that address the problem of cellphone use while driving and other driver distractions continues to rise. On June 2015, according to the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, most states have passed laws to address the problem of using a cellphone while driving. In California, the primary law banning the use of all cellphones while driving pertains to all ages, including bus drivers, and commercial truck drivers. A secondary law in California puts a ban on all cell phone use (handheld and hands-free) for novice drivers. 18 years of age is considered to be a novice driver (State Laws, N/d). Almost all of the laws have "primary enforcement" provisions, this means that a person driving may be issued a ticket for the use of a hand-held cellphone while driving without any other traffic