4/8 Texting and Driving

1. Texting and driving is as dangerous as driving intoxicated. Some don't think it's a problem. 77% of 2. young adults are very or somewhat confident that they can safely text while driving. 55% of young 3. adult drivers claim it's easy to text while they drive. Now it is a probem. Texting while driving
4. causes 1,600,000 accidents per year and 330,000 injuries. Texting while driving has become one of 5. the country's top killers. It's the same as having four beers before you drive, and being blind for
6. five seconds at a time. Drivers assume that they can text while driving and remain safe, but the
7. numbers don't lie. Laws can take care of the problem, but not everyone follows them. 10 states plus 8. plus D.C. prohibit all drivers from using handheld cell phones. 32 states and D.C. prohibit novice 9. drivers from cell phone use. 39 states plus D.C. prohibit all drivers from text messaging. 13% of 10. drivers age 18-20 involved in car wrecks admitted to texting or talkig on their phone at the same 11. time of the crash. There are only 5 states that have no ban on textin. 6 states have partial and the
12. rest is for all drivers in those states. In my opinion, I don't think anyone should be texting and
13. driving. It's not as important as your life, or someone else's. Any text message can wait. Texting 14. is just as bad as talking on your cell phone. It causes distractions too. I've seen people run mutiple 15. red lights and stop signs from talking on their phone. If you don't think that you can't get caught 16. texting and driving, you can, even if you crash your car and try to say you weren't texting. You 17. can tell what time you sent the last text message and when the crash happened. It wouldn't be a 18. problem if people weren't so addicted to texting and using their phones. Some people think that 19. their phone is their life and everything is on it. We use to never even have cell phones, and it's
20. only going to get worse.