Continuing with our series on interstate driving and safety, I will attempt to follow up Rick’s recent blog on uninsured drivers and Pierce’s blog on hit and run drivers. Except, I will be focusing on another type of dangerous driver that Steve recently blogged about: the texter.
You’re probably quite familiar with someone who can’t seem to put that cell phone down. Perhaps it’s your teenager who has to “stay in touch with their BFF” during the few hours that they aren’t in school and chatting F2F (that’s face-to-face for all of you who aren’t up on the texting lingo). While that may be so, texting while driving is a serious danger to both the texter and other drivers on the interstate highways.
Back in July, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute released a report on the dangers of texting. Specifically, the Institute found that texting is the most dangerous driving distraction and increases the risk of collision 23 times more than when a driver is not texting. Actually, the results of the study were particularly applicable to interstate driving. During the study, the researchers outfitted the cabs of 100 long-haul trucks with video cameras and watched the drivers for 18 months. Their findings showed that in the moments before a crash or near a crash, drivers spent nearly five seconds looking at their texting devices. Traveling at highway speeds, five seconds is enough time for a truck to travel the distance of a football field.
Luckily, House Bill 4394 was introduced in the state House by Representative Lee Gonzales to ban texting while driving in Michigan. Unfortunately, the Michigan legislature voted to make texting while driving a secondary offense. In other words, if a driver is pulled over for another violation, this can be “tacked on” as a secondary offense. However, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer has also recently introduced legislation on July 29 to ban all texting or e-mailing while driving, nationwide. Failure to comply would mean a loss of federal highway funds for states. Hopefully, this could push Michigan and other states into stricter enforcement.
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