Distracted Driving

Persuasive Essay- Distracted Driving On October 26th 2009, Ontario’s ban on the use of handheld devices while driving took effect. Since then, thousands of drivers in Ontario have broken this law. This causes major issues because, 1) Using handheld devices while driving can cause many road accidents, 2) Many people don’t seem to be taking this important law seriously, and 3) It puts everyone in our society in serious, life threatening danger. I think that the province of Ontario can solve these problems by, improving the current law on handheld device use while driving, and being more disciplinary to distracted drivers. Distracted driving is a very serious issue in our world today. A large number of the accidents that happen on the road are related to the use of a handheld device while driving. In fact, drivers who use cell phones are four times more likely to be in a collision, than drivers who are focused on the road. In 2010, the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) ranked distracted driving, as the no. 1 concern on the road. But still, many people continue to disregard the facts. Handheld device use while driving has also caused many injuries and fatalities. Not only in the drivers at fault, but also in innocent pedestrians. “Drivers distracted by handheld devices killed an estimated 16,000 people from 2001 to 2007,” U.S. researchers report. The numbers are said to increase in future years because of the continuing invention of wireless technology. This shows that if distracted driving numbers increase, the death rate due to cell phone related accidents, will also increase drastically. Even though the province of Ontario has seen and acted on this growing problem, it doesn’t seem to be getting through to some drivers. On February 1st 2010, Ontario’s Provincial Police (OPP) began to give out $155 fines, to anyone caught using a handheld device while driving. Since the law was implemented, about 49,000 drivers in Ontario were caught