As technology and comfort become more important in our lives, the less we are concerned about safety. When this examiner first learned to drive, cars only had manual transmissions and in-car loud speakers were not rated by watts and a car radio was a luxury. Shifting gears actually makes a driver truly engaged in the process of real road driving and awareness with no hands left to do all of today’s distracting habits while driving. Today our cars have everything and what they do not have, we bring to the car. Fancy heated and cooling cup holders have to have a Starbucks and 800 watts coming out of 20 woofers and tweeters. Driving is now secondary and safety is for the other guy.
This examiner once observed a young mother at a stop light here in Tallahassee putting on makeup, the visor mirror pulled down, sipping coffee with two kids in the back seat. When the light turned green, she moved but was still totally engaged in activities other than the driving part. What would have happened if her cell phone rang?
We are now at a cross roads where mandatory seat belts laws were first just being discussed by government officials when in comes to the "cell phone" distraction. It is now a law that seat belts be used and a primary reason for a citation. A Florida Senate Bill (SB 416) banning texting while driving has made it through three committees and with only two opposing votes. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have bans against texting while driving. The Republican majority believe that there are too many governmental controls and that there are suffucient laws on the books already to deter and enforce distracted use of the cell phone while driving. Just how distractive to driving is texting while driving? Every parent and teen should view the video of what could happen while texting and driving.
Try this experiment on your own. Pick a safe place such as the empty Tallahassee Mall parking lot and drive at 10-20 mph and sip your drink from the cup holder. Not much distraction while drinking. If you smoke, light up a cigarette and if you do not, pretend to light one up. Not much distraction in smoking. Now try texting. It takes a few seconds to find the letters unless you have them memorized and know exactly where on the key pad they are - this examiner can not text without looking, but drink and smoke, not a problem. If you have any basic knowledge of mathematics, convert miles per hour to feet per second. Thank goodness, someone has found the conversion and it is 1.467 (easier to use the rounded up 1.5 factor) that will change MPH to FPS. If you were driving the speed limit on Capital Circle how many FPS would you be traveling? The math would be 45 times 1.5 or 67.5 feet per second. If you took your eyes off the road to text a two second quick text, you traveled 135 feet at 45 MPH. Since we rarely think distance in feet, converted to yards would be 45 yards or almost half a football field. Just think of how many different objects could have suddenly appeared in front of your car while traveling this distance or the car veering off the road causing you to quickly try to correct or even over steer in to the other lane. Texting while driving is super dangerous, but should it be banned by a law?
For example, in one Sarasota County case this year, the state attorney's office filed a vehicular-homicide charge, instead of a traffic violation, against driver accused of running a red light while talking on his cellphone. During its investigation of the crash, which led to the death of an 82-year-old passenger in the other vehicle, the Florida Highway Patrol obtained the at-fault driver's cellphone records. The prosecutor has alleged that driver's use of the mobile phone was reckless and warranted a felony charge. Since a law already exists for reckless driving, there is no apparent need for a specific law against texting while driving.
The trend toward text messaging as a primary form of communication brings with it a number of challenges. Among them, the temptation to send and read text messages while driving. Most on board GPS devices can not be programmed while the car is in motion for safety reasons. A report from Decisive Magazine has found a proprietary anti-texting software for cell phones that deactivates the keyboard and eliminates the ability to text or email while driving – or when parents deem appropriate.
PhoneGuard's Drive Safe Software:- Disables texting, emailing and other distractions while driving a vehicle. If the phone is moving more than 10 mph, the application automatically disables texting, emailing, surfing the web and instant messaging.- Knows when a driver is moving at an unsafe speed. By setting the software’s SpeedAlert™, the administrator of the phone (parent, employer) is notified when the phone has gone over a certain speed limit by receiving a text message with the speed and location on a map. Exclusive solution to PhoneGuard.- Puts the phone in Phone TimeOut. The software’s "time-out" feature can be used by parents to control the hours when kids can text, email or surf the web, such as school or work hours.
Keeping the Don’t-Text-and-Drive vow could be critical. While all distractions can endanger drivers’ safety, texting is the most alarming, according to the Department of Transportation . In 2009, nearly 5,000 fatal auto crashes involved driver distractions such as texting and cell phones, the national Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported.
Texting while driving increases the risk of accidents by 23.2 times, according to Virginia Tech Driver Institute. PhoneGuard is available forBlackberry® and Android™ users and retails for $29.99 for a single user and $69.99 for a family three-pack. Well worth the price to any parent of a teen concerned about driving and cell phone use.
Florida’s Governor Scott says that his wife’s car was struck by a distracted driver on a cell phone. Despite this incident, a spokesperson for the Republican governor who has campaigned for limited government and less regulations has not come out for, or against, a law banning cell phone use while driving. Testifying before the legislature in favor of a ban on Monday, Joyce Concklin, was seriously injured by a driver who was texting and died with the cell phone still clutched in his hand. However, not moved by the testimony was the Chairman of the Transportation and Highway Safety Subcommittee, Rep. Brad Drake, said, "It’s difficult to legislate every kind of human behavior and then try to enforce it." Drake said, "People just need to be responsible for themselves."
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