Kari Hartbauer

Kvh5154@psu.edu

Texting While Driving: Aid the Ban

252 Atherton Hall University Park, Pennsylvania 16802 Phone: 7244691615 E-Mail: kvh5154@psu.edu

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Texting While Driving: Aid the Ban

Dear Pennsylvania Legislators, Congratulations on a commendable job passing the new law banning texting while driving. We are certainly headed in the right direction. However, I do believe that we are only on the right pathway, as a simple ban may not be enough. More measures can be and should be reasonably taken. If high school students learned all about the dangers of texting while driving before they start driving on their own, it could be the most practical, useful information they learn in four full years of classes. In order to prevent those who are most at risk, young drivers, from texting while driving, a mandatory, state funded educational program should be implemented in all Pennsylvania high schools.

Research and Reasoning

First, I will reemphasize the severity of this problem and then explain why the existing legislation is insufficient. There are three main types of distraction: visual (taking your eyes off the road), manual (taking your hands off the wheel), and cognitive (taking your mind off of what you are doing). Texting while driving is especially dangerous because it combines all three types of distraction. According to a 2009 Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study, people who attempt to read or send text messages while driving are twenty-three times more likely to get into a car crash. Texting while driving is a major problem in the United States today, and the issue has been all over the local new recently thanks to the passing of new legislation. According to a March 2008 New York

Time article by Dave Caldwell, Washington became the first state to ban texting

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while driving in 2008, which means that all thirty-five states that have banned texting while driving have done so within the last four years. Figure 1.1 from Hilary Cohens 2011 Daily Collegian article shows the thirty-five states that have banned texting while driving for all drivers in blue, the seven states that have banned it for new drivers in orange, and the eight states that have not banned it at all in gray.

Figure 1.1 Extent of Texting While Driving Ban Across the United States

However, despite new legislation, the number of injuries and deaths as a result of accidents in which the driver was texting has been on the rise. So why have texting related accidents increased so much over that period of time? The answer likely has to do with the rising dependence of young people on their cell phones. According to a September 2010 study by the Pew Internet American Life Project, the average teen sends and receives five times more text messages

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per day than the average adult. Not surprisingly, according to 2011 data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, sixteen percent of all texting related car accidents involve drivers under the age of twenty. Figure 1.2, from a 2010 study by the Centers for Disease Control, clearly shows that younger drivers, those between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine, are far more likely than any other age group to text while drivingmore than fifty percent of those surveyed admitted to doing so within the last thirty days.

Figure 1.2 Frequency of Texting While Driving Among Age Groups

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Since young drivers are clearly the most likely to text while driving, legislation should be passed that focuses on early education and prevention in addition to the recent ban.

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Policy Proposal
My plan for reform involves a mandatory program in Pennsylvania high schools intended to educate new drivers about the dangers of texting while driving. Like with other subjects such as English and Math, the Pennsylvania Department of Education provides guidelines for the curriculum of high school Drivers Education classes. The most recent version of this document, Content and

Performance Expectations for Driver Education, was published nine years ago, in
2003long before text message technology became as widespread as it is today. Therefore, the manual does not even mention cell phones, let alone texting, as a possible danger on the roads.

My policy, which would be proposed to and hopefully put into action by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, would require all high schools in the state of Pennsylvania to run a mandatory texting while driving education program for sophomores. The state would develop a set of guidelines for the program, which would present students with facts and statistics about texting related car accidents with the intent of personally motivating them not to send or read text messages while theyre behind the wheel. The program will also encourage students to stop their friends and family members from texting while driving, therefore spreading the impact of the program to older drivers as well.

There are existing sources from which the curriculum for this program could be modeled and developed. Cell phone company AT&T developed a campaign called It Can Wait in 2010, which has relatable, information-packed videos, handouts, flyers, and lesson plans that are available online for free for schools to use. In addition to providing an extensive collection of multimedia resources, the campaign provides ideas for interactive projects and assignments. The impact

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that this program would have on the safety of all drivers statewide is massive compared to the relatively low amount of time, effort, and money needed from the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the individual school districts. Therefore, I do no think that there will be much difficulty in establishing this program in Pennsylvania schools.

This policy will work because it focuses on prevention rather than on punishment. Teenagers are far more likely to resist the urge to text behind the wheel because they are informed of the potentially deadly consequences than they are because of the small chance that a police officer is nearby waiting to fine them $50. The ban on texting while driving is inevitably hard to enforce, and many young drivers believe that they can text without getting caught, which, honestly, they still can. The key is to make sure that they realize that it only takes one text message to destroy their lives and the lives of others. The primary emphasis of my proposed program would be on the risk of accident, with a secondary emphasis on the legal consequences.

Since the program would be built into the school curriculum and primarily require materials that would be available to the entire school district at once, such as AT&Ts online resources, the necessary funding would be low. Finding time within the school day to present the required information for this program would not be hard for the vast majority of high schools that already offer Drivers Education as a mandatory course. For those schools that do not, the program could be run as a series of assemblies or as an online module as the individual school districts see fit. While it can be argued that a school should not be required to run the texting while driving education program if its budget does not even allow for a standard Drivers Education course, I think that the necessity of this information outweighs the extra effort.

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Hopefully, you have realized that there are better ways to stop texting while driving than simply banning the act. One possible solution to this severe problem is to implement an awareness program in high schools in order to educate new drivers about the dangers of texting behind the wheel and motivate them to not partake in such dangerous activity themselves. This mandatory education program in all Pennsylvania high schools would teach young drivers, who are the most at risk, the dangers of texting and driving, instilling safe habits in them at an early age.

Works Cited
As New Year's Eve Approaches, AT&T Aims to Reach Millions with Powerful Anti-Texting While Driving Message." AT&T Intellectual Property, 27 Dec. 2010. Web. 10

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<http://www.att.com/gen/pressroom?pid=18856&cdvn=news&newsarticle id=31449>. Box, Sherri. "New Data from Virginia Tech Transportation Institute Provides Insight into Cell Phone Use and Driving Distraction." Virginia Tech News. 29 July 2009. Web. <http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2009/07/2009571.html>. Caldwell, Dave. "With Text-Messaging Ban While Driving, Legislators Play Gizmo Catch-Up." New York Times 16 Mar. 2008. Print. Cohen, Hillary. "State Government Passes Ban on Texting While Driving." Daily Collegian [State College] 2 Nov. 2011: 1. Print. Lenhart, Amanda. "Cell Phones and American Adults." Pew Internet and American Life Project, 02 Sept. 2010. Web. <http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Cell-Phones-and-AmericanAdults/Part-4-A-comparison-of-cell-phone-attitudes--use-between-teensand-adults/Teens-are-bigger-users-of-text-messaging-than-adults.aspx>.

"Distracted Driving in the United States and Europe." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 01 Aug. 2011. Web. <http://www.cdc.gov/Features/dsDistractedDriving/>.

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Pennsylvania Department of Education. Content and Performance Expectations for Driver Education. 2003. Print. Scott, Katherine. "Ban on Texting and Driving Takes Effect in Pa." 6 ABC Action News. <http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=8573327>. United States of America. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Distraction.gov: Official US Government Website for Distracted Driving. Washington DC: NHTSA, 2011. Print.