Editorial: Texting while driving is a danger to all of us
You need two hands to send a text message, two more to hold the wheel, two eyes to look at the screen and two more eyes to watch the road. That adds up to four hands and four eyes -- way more than the typical human possesses.
Texting while driving, in other words, isn't physically possible, which makes it both dumb and dangerous to a driver, any passengers and everyone else on the road. After all, anybody more focused on LOLs and OMGs can't simultaneously keep track of pedestrians, pets, cyclists, potholes, stopped vehicles, stop signs, yield signs, white and yellow lane markers and other miscellaneous road hazards.
That's why North Carolina and at least 13 other states and the District of Columbia have banned the practice. Gov. Bev Perdue signed House Bill 9 in June, and the law takes effect Dec. 1. Now federal lawmakers, including Sen. Kay Hagan of Greensboro, want to make it a nationwide ban. Putting an end to this practice can't happen fast enough.
Texting is a relatively new phenomenon, which helps explain why there's little research on the topic and why so few states have banned it while driving. But the research so far bolsters the argument against texting and driving.
One study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that truck drivers had a collision risk 23 times greater than normal when they were texting. A University of Utah study found the crash risk increased eightfold for college students who were texting while driving. An eye-opening report by Car and Driver magazine found that reaction times of drivers who were both reading and writing text messages were as bad as if they had a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 -- the level at which you're legally drunk in North Carolina.
Consider, too, the anecdotal evidence. In March, UNCG professor and biking advocate Mark Schulz was riding home when he was hit by a car on Aycock Street. His injuries included a shattered kneecap, crushed vertebrae, broken ribs, a broken sternum and a concussion The driver who hit him, Greensboro police said, was sending a text message.
Unlike, say, health care reform, a ban on texting and driving will have nationwide and bipartisan support. A recent survey by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that nearly 90 percent of people thought texting and e-mailing while driving was a very serious threat to their safety. That's nearly the same percentage who considered driving after drinking alcohol to be a serious threat.
North Carolina was wise to have banned texting while driving so quickly. The rest of the country quickly needs to do the same.
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