A Fair Proposal For Reducing The Incidence of Texting and Driving

A Just and Equitable Way to Reducing The Incidence of Texting and Driving

The problem is that if we make it a law not to text and drive as 18 states have done, including the State of Illinois, where do we stop? Should listening to the radio, CDs or audiobooks be against the law? Should talking to somebody in the front seat be against the law? Should driving without enough sleep be a crime? Anything that distracts your attention from the road can contribute to the likelihood of an accident. It all depends on the driver. Experienced drivers can prioritize and know how not to get too emotional or intellectually absorbed in other pursuits while driving.

On the other hand, texting and driving is a special case because it requires taking one hand off the steering wheel AND your eyes off the road temporarily.
So your mind, eyes, and hands are all where they should not be. Studies have shown that texting and driving ranks right behind drinking and driving as a major cause of accidents.

As in all crimes, the punishment should fit the crime. While texting and driving is dangerous, it is far more dangerous in some situations than in other situations. In this sense, it is unlike drinking and driving, where you are a danger to everybody on the road all the time you are driving, not just for a minute or two. Not wearing a seat belt could also be considered more dangerous than texting because you are certain to get injured if you do not wear a seat belt and get in an accident. Also, wearing a seat belt protects you from the other driver of the other car, not just yourself. It is not certain that you will cause an accident while texting. For example, texting in traffic is far more dangerous than texting on the open road where the nearest car is a few hundred feet away and you are in the right hand lane. Odds are if you have to stop suddenly you are going to go off the road or hit the other cars rear bumper off center, reducing the accident seriousness. Perhaps the most dangerous situation is texting while in traffic and while driving at high speeds. The only thing worse than this would be to add in rain or snow and darkness, i.e. nighttime driving.

I am not sure that the law against texting and driving is routinely enforced, even in States where it is a primary offense, such as Illinois. This means you can be stopped and arrested for texting even if you were not doing anything else wrong, like speeding. The reason is probably because of the sheer number of people who text and drive. It has been estimated that as many as 50% of people with cell phones do some amount of texting and driving. Another reason is that unless you are actually just staring at your phone, officers may be reluctant to arrest you. Finally, unless the office is immediately behind you, it is difficult to determine that you are texting and driving. You could be looking at your coffee. The officer actually has to observe you for awhile, and odds are you would figure out you are being followed and stop texting before he can stop you and arrest you. Unless the officer can produce an arrest, he is not going to get credit for an arrest.

So even though texting and driving can be dangerous, it is not always at the same level of danger. Although it is always somewhat potentially dangerous. About the only time it is not dangerous would be if you were stuck in traffic going a few miles per hour, or in a low speed zone with no other cars or pedestrians around. But then you would have to be certain of that, meaning you would have to be looking up and down from your cell phone a lot to determine that. How many people who text and drive actually look up and down frequently from the road to their phone while texting?

So here is what I suggest. I think it should remain against the law to text and drive, but I think there are some things that can be done to make the punishment fit the crime, to make sure the law is actually enforced, as well as things that can prevent accidents from happening in the first place when people are texting and driving.

First of all, to discourage the part of texting where you are actually typing, build apps into all cell phones that convert speech to text, and allow playback and editing of the message with simple steps like a verbal STOP command. ERASE WORD command. ERASE SENTENCE command. REPLAY message command, A SEND command, and so forth. These would be verbal commands that you can do using a Bluetooth device, so both hands are always on the wheel. If you are using this method to text, it should not be a crime.

Secondly, require all cell phones sold after a certain date to have GPS in them and enabled whenever you are texting and moving at a speed over 5 miles per hour. Whenever you text, the phone would record your GPS coordinates so it would keep a log of the length of time it took to compose the text message and the distance covered. (It would not keep a log of the actual text.) Of course, this could not serve as evidence that you were texting and driving because the log of texted calls can not determine whether you were a passenger or a driver, unless you were caught in the act of texting . However, if a record is established that the text messages in the log were recorded during the period in which you usually drive to work, and the court establishes that you were at work on those days, and that you regularly drive to work, the combination of these pieces of evidence could be used to prosecute you for texting and driving. More importantly however, the phone log could be used by the judge to merit appropriate punishment. If the law is structured to give the judge a great deal of lee way in assessing the amount of the fine or punishment, such as a wide dollar range, the law could truly be made so that the punishment does meet the crime by allowing the judge to take into consideration things like how often you texted and drove, how much you texted and drove during each trip, etc. While it is not likely all of this evidence would be routinely used, it could be used in cases where there was a serious accident and people were injured or killed. And by so doing, and by knowing you can be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and the punishment does get more serious depending on the results and the frequency of breaking the law, people would begin to get the message that they should only text and drive when it is really necessary and they should use a speech to text tool instead of hands and eyes off the wheel approach.