What Is Texting And Driving Irresponsible?
Impairment is impairment. Whether it's caused from alcohol or from seemingly innocuous acts like texting, surfing the web, or tweeting all pose very fatal risks to drivers and their immediate surroundings.
Drinking and driving is irresponsible, but so is willfully looking away from the road to attend to something else. According to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, if you're driving 55 mph and take your eyes off the road for five seconds, the average amount of time it takes to send a text, you'd have driven the length of a football field without looking at the road. Just imagine all that can happen in the matter of five seconds: a car in front of you going the same speed suddenly slows down for traffic ahead, an animal walks out in front of your car, or an ignorant driver without ample time cuts through your lane to get through a median. You have yourself facing three different crashes for a message. …show more content…
It's interesting to think someone driving under the influence with slow impairment faces a minimum of a 500 dollar fine, jail time and license suspension, while someone with no impairment, even if just for brief moments, only faces misdemeanor charges at most.
In Arizona and Montana, there are absolutely no restrictions on using your phone while driving. According to a study conducted by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, 330,000 injuries are caused every year from texting while driving. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, 11 teens die every day. In a single year, 4,015 teenagers will die as a result of texting while driving. Why does our society emphasize preparing the 'generation of tomorrow', but won't increase the penalties for things that prevent their
tomorrow?
Why is drunk driving more punishable than texting while driving? Texting while driving isn't any safer. In some ways, it's incredibly more dangerous. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that texting while driving is the same as driving after four beers! A texting driver is also six times more likely to cause an accident than driving intoxicated.
Should drunk driving and being distracted by your smartphone carry the same penalties? Absolutely. Driving allows a (BAC) limit of .08. Texting while driving should be intolerable; it's the same as driving blind! How can anyone place a limit on being blind? Impairment of any kind shouldn't be permitted in the slightest bit.
The effects of texting while driving to drinking and driving are worse. In a study conducted by the Transport Research Laboratory , texting while driving slow a driver's reaction time by 37% while those driving at the (BAC).08 limit were slowed by 13%! It took a legally drunk driver four feet to break, while it took a driver reading an email 36 feet to break. For a driver to send a text, it took them a staggering 70 feet!
Based on these facts, should the penalties of drunk driving be the same for those distracted by their smart phones? The answer is yes, because they both carry the same consequences. More than 3,000 people were killed in 2014 due to distracted driving, and another 424,000 were injured, the U.S. Department of Transportation reports.
The truth is, every life matters. All of us have a purpose to fulfill and a change to make. A big change we can make in our lives and those of others is to zip away our smart phones and give our undivided attention to the road. Drinking, texting, and enjoying the many capabilities of our smart phones is perfectly acceptable but not when vehicles are added into the mix. Anytime you endanger a human life, especially to the extent of drinking and driving or texting and driving, punishment must be issued. What's a worse punishment: losing your driving privileges, perhaps even temporarily or being responsible for deaths and injuries?
On July 30, 2013 an 8-month-old infant was killed when a New York bus driver distracted by his phone veered off a street and hit a pole that knocked onto the baby's stroller. The driver was not charged. On November 1, 2015 a drunk driver in Maryland ran a red light, crashed into a car, and killed a 1-year-old baby boy. The driver was charged with negligent manslaughter and faces 11 years in prison. It's unjust to charge one impaired driver with murder while the other who's guilty of the same crime gets away with it.
Drivers who are under the influence of alcohol or are distracted by their smart phones pose the same risks. Their actions also result in the same consequences. Therefore, their penalties should be consistent with each other.
Drinking and driving is irresponsible, but so is willfully looking away from the road to attend to something else. According to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, if you're driving 55 mph and take your eyes off the road for five seconds, the average amount of time it takes to send a text, you'd have driven the length of a football field without looking at the road. Just imagine all that can happen in the matter of five seconds: a car in front of you going the same speed suddenly slows down for traffic ahead, an animal walks out in front of your car, or an ignorant driver without ample time cuts through your lane to get through a median. You have yourself facing three different crashes for a message. …show more content…
It's interesting to think someone driving under the influence with slow impairment faces a minimum of a 500 dollar fine, jail time and license suspension, while someone with no impairment, even if just for brief moments, only faces misdemeanor charges at most.
In Arizona and Montana, there are absolutely no restrictions on using your phone while driving. According to a study conducted by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, 330,000 injuries are caused every year from texting while driving. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, 11 teens die every day. In a single year, 4,015 teenagers will die as a result of texting while driving. Why does our society emphasize preparing the 'generation of tomorrow', but won't increase the penalties for things that prevent their
tomorrow?
Why is drunk driving more punishable than texting while driving? Texting while driving isn't any safer. In some ways, it's incredibly more dangerous. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that texting while driving is the same as driving after four beers! A texting driver is also six times more likely to cause an accident than driving intoxicated.
Should drunk driving and being distracted by your smartphone carry the same penalties? Absolutely. Driving allows a (BAC) limit of .08. Texting while driving should be intolerable; it's the same as driving blind! How can anyone place a limit on being blind? Impairment of any kind shouldn't be permitted in the slightest bit.
The effects of texting while driving to drinking and driving are worse. In a study conducted by the Transport Research Laboratory , texting while driving slow a driver's reaction time by 37% while those driving at the (BAC).08 limit were slowed by 13%! It took a legally drunk driver four feet to break, while it took a driver reading an email 36 feet to break. For a driver to send a text, it took them a staggering 70 feet!
Based on these facts, should the penalties of drunk driving be the same for those distracted by their smart phones? The answer is yes, because they both carry the same consequences. More than 3,000 people were killed in 2014 due to distracted driving, and another 424,000 were injured, the U.S. Department of Transportation reports.
The truth is, every life matters. All of us have a purpose to fulfill and a change to make. A big change we can make in our lives and those of others is to zip away our smart phones and give our undivided attention to the road. Drinking, texting, and enjoying the many capabilities of our smart phones is perfectly acceptable but not when vehicles are added into the mix. Anytime you endanger a human life, especially to the extent of drinking and driving or texting and driving, punishment must be issued. What's a worse punishment: losing your driving privileges, perhaps even temporarily or being responsible for deaths and injuries?
On July 30, 2013 an 8-month-old infant was killed when a New York bus driver distracted by his phone veered off a street and hit a pole that knocked onto the baby's stroller. The driver was not charged. On November 1, 2015 a drunk driver in Maryland ran a red light, crashed into a car, and killed a 1-year-old baby boy. The driver was charged with negligent manslaughter and faces 11 years in prison. It's unjust to charge one impaired driver with murder while the other who's guilty of the same crime gets away with it.
Drivers who are under the influence of alcohol or are distracted by their smart phones pose the same risks. Their actions also result in the same consequences. Therefore, their penalties should be consistent with each other.