Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has decided to gather a group of experts to study distracted driving when texting and using cell phones. The announcement of the summit follows a study released last week by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute which found that 18 wheeler drivers who texted, their collision risk was 23 times greater than when not texting.
A separate report by Car and Driver magazine found that texting and driving is more dangerous than drunken driving. Texting has grown from nearly 10 billion messages a month in December, 2005 to more than 110 billion in December 2008, according to CTIA, the cellular phone industries’ trade group.
Legislation has been introduced in Washington to ban texting while driving. Although enforcement may be difficult, the education and advertisement of enforcement should tune in drivers that text. 14 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws making texting while driving illegal. The federal government is in a transportation spending mode from billions of dollars to bale out the car manufacturers to the Cash for Clunkers program. Sufficient funding to eliminate and enforce distractions of the 18 wheeler truck driver, the tour bus driver, and those of passenger vehicles is warranted to make the road way free from accidents caused by distracted drivers.
Richard J. Arsenault, 2011
