Texting While Driving
Hailey Browning
Professor Nance
English Composition I
2 December 2014
Texting While Driving, Why is it a Norm? A group of friends were crossing the street when bam! A car ran a red light and struck them. The driver was texting on the cell phone. Each year, 5,000 traffic fatalities are caused by distraction on a phone (Key Facts: Distractions). This statistic from the American Automobile Association shows the dangerous effects of texting and driving. However, many states are now looking at laws to change these alarming statistics. New laws are being considered to avoid texting and driving. Automobile accidents are the number one killer among teenagers, and over a quarter of them involve texting while driving. Several studies have proven texting while driving to be more dangerous than driving while intoxicated. Society has begun focusing on this problem and is trying to find potential solutions. Harvard Center of Risk Analysis did a study that estimated that cell phone use while driving contributes to 6 percent of crashes. This equals to 636,000 crashes, 330,000 injuries, 12,0000 serious injuries and 2,600 deaths each year. This clearly shows that texting while driving is a dangerous thing to do. Texting or reading a text …show more content…
Research performed by Matthew R.E. Romoser, at the Human Performance Lab of University of Massachusetts shows that texting is a more dangerous behind-the-wheel activity than drinking and driving. Romoser states, “Using a cell phone, which doesn’t involve as many glances away from the roadway, ups your chances of crashing by four to six times, which is comparable to intoxicated driving” (Don’t Text). However, Gautam Divekar and Romoser examined various types of distracted driving, including tuning the radio, changing the CDs, looking something on the map, and etc. None of the experiments could compare risky as texting while
Professor Nance
English Composition I
2 December 2014
Texting While Driving, Why is it a Norm? A group of friends were crossing the street when bam! A car ran a red light and struck them. The driver was texting on the cell phone. Each year, 5,000 traffic fatalities are caused by distraction on a phone (Key Facts: Distractions). This statistic from the American Automobile Association shows the dangerous effects of texting and driving. However, many states are now looking at laws to change these alarming statistics. New laws are being considered to avoid texting and driving. Automobile accidents are the number one killer among teenagers, and over a quarter of them involve texting while driving. Several studies have proven texting while driving to be more dangerous than driving while intoxicated. Society has begun focusing on this problem and is trying to find potential solutions. Harvard Center of Risk Analysis did a study that estimated that cell phone use while driving contributes to 6 percent of crashes. This equals to 636,000 crashes, 330,000 injuries, 12,0000 serious injuries and 2,600 deaths each year. This clearly shows that texting while driving is a dangerous thing to do. Texting or reading a text …show more content…
Research performed by Matthew R.E. Romoser, at the Human Performance Lab of University of Massachusetts shows that texting is a more dangerous behind-the-wheel activity than drinking and driving. Romoser states, “Using a cell phone, which doesn’t involve as many glances away from the roadway, ups your chances of crashing by four to six times, which is comparable to intoxicated driving” (Don’t Text). However, Gautam Divekar and Romoser examined various types of distracted driving, including tuning the radio, changing the CDs, looking something on the map, and etc. None of the experiments could compare risky as texting while