...Abstract Advancing technology in wireless communications is presenting a growing concern for distracted driving due to using cell phones and other electronic devices while driving. Although distracted driving accidents and fatalities have risen in the last decade, placing a ban on the use of a cell phone or other electronic devices while operating a motor vehicle as some states have will not resolve the issue. In fact a ban on cell phones and driving may very well increase the accident and fatality rate because drivers are now more involved with concealing their illegal behaviors. More citizen participation and drivers safety management should be more carefully considered in a transpiring situation such as this. More Americans should be made aware of the dangers of distracted driving, and become more involved in a reform for safety. Distracted Driving In the last decade, accidents resulting in injuries, or death caused by distracted driving has increased drastically as technology in wireless communications has advanced. Distracted driving is defined as operating a motor vehicle while simultaneously focusing your attention elsewhere (Goldfarb, 2010). Distracted driving includes texting and driving, using a cell phone or smart phone, eating and drinking, talking to passengers, grooming, reading (including maps), using a navigation system, watching a video, adjusting the radio, CD player, and/or MP3 player. About every 24 seconds there is an accident, and so far this year...
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...Texting While Driving The number one leading cause of teenage driving deaths and crashes is texting while driving. Texting while driving is teenagers’ number one driving distraction (Cell Phone). Texting while driving has not really been a big concern until recently. Law enforcement have realized that the percentage of texting and driving accident have risen over the past years. Texting while driving has been getting ignored but now it’s time to bring it to the light to save some lives. Texting while driving is the #1 wrong thing to do while driving than anything else (Cell Phone). Teenagers do not realize how dangerous texting and driving is; it can cause injuries, distractions, and even deaths. Texting while driving is a growing trend, and a national epidemic, quickly becoming one of the country’s top killers (Distracted Driving Laws). Every year there are one million six hundred thousand, accidents per year and of those accidents there are three hundred thirsty thousand, injuries per year (Distracted Driving Laws). Eleven teen deaths every day due to texting while driving (Distracted Driving Laws). Nearly twenty-five percent of all car accidents are due texting while driving (Distracted Driving Laws). Texting while driving is about six times more likely to cause an accident than driving intoxicated (Distracted Driving Laws). Texting while driving is the same as driving after four beers (Distracted Driving Laws). Texting while driving takes away your attention for five......
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...Distracted driving impacts anyone who drives or cares about someone who drives. I live in Northern Virginia and the traffic here, like most metropolitan areas, is terrible and growing worse each year. The Northern Virginia driving population increases every year resulting from business and housing growth. Each year also brings a wave of new teenagers into the driving population. Each day during my typical commute one hour commute, I observe drivers text messaging on their cell phones. A recent survey conducted by Journey Safe, a safe driving advocacy organization, found that over 90% of teens admit to doing multiple tasks while driving, such as talking on the cell phone, eating, playing loud music, channel surfing, using mp3 players, and interacting with friends in the car even when they admit they find it distracting. The same survey results indicate that an overwhelming 75% of teens admitted to text messaging while driving (JourneySafe, 2007). Text messaging while driving is a growing trend and is becoming one of the nation’s top killers. In 2011, 1.3 billion (nearly 25% of all) automobile accidents resulted from texting while driving and 11 teens died everyday from texting while driving (Textinganddrivingsafety.com, 2013). However, only thirty-nine (39) states plus DC prohibit all drivers from text messaging (Distraction.gov 2012). Quite frankly, distracted driving is a dangerous reality and it makes driving risky business for everyone on the roads. Americans......
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...Distracted driving: Stay focused when on the road 1. Teddi Dineley Johnson It’s 8 a.m., and you jump in your car to drive to work. You have every intention of driving safely, but within minutes of merging onto the highway you’ve already checked your makeup in the mirror, fiddled with your car’s radio, programmed your GPS for a meeting location, made two calls on your cellphone and sent a text message to your sister. You might not realize it, but you’re a distracted driver. Each time you take your focus off the road, even if just for a split second, you’re putting your life and the lives of others in danger. An emerging and deadly epidemic on the nation’s roads, distracted driving-related crashes caused at least 5,500 deaths and nearly 450,000 injuries in 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. However, since many local law enforcement agencies don’t routinely document distraction factors in crash reports, federal safety officials believe the numbers are actually much higher. “Driving a car is a very complex task,” says Barbara Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, which estimates that distractions are associated with 15 percent to 25 percent of crashes at all levels. “It requires your complete attention. All it takes is a glance away for more than two seconds and you can get into serious trouble.” Spend your time at the wheel focused on the road, not on distractions like phones, food or friends. Graphics courtesy......
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...Evolution of Distracted Driving The problem of distracted driving is more common than operators like to admit and is a serious factor in automobile accidents and fatalities. With the advent of cellular telephones, distracted driving is coming more and more under scrutiny, but distracted driving dates back almost to the beginning of the automobile. In 1930, car radios were in question. Massachusetts and St. Louis proposed laws to ban radios while driving. According to historian Michael Lamm, “Opponents of car radios argued that they distracted drivers and caused accidents, that tuning them took a driver’s attention away from the road, and that music could lull a driver to sleep” (qtd. in DeMain). In a 1934 poll of New York Auto club members, 56 percent considered the car radio a “dangerous distraction.” However, the Radio Manufacturers Association recognized the potential benefits of the radio and defended keeping them for the purposes of informing drivers of bad road conditions, severe weather and helping sleepy drivers stay awake (qtd. in DeMain). Automobiles have changed greatly since their inception, including the interior accessories and instrumentation. Automobile manufacturers have not always taken into account the diminished vision of older drivers when designing labels for the interior accessories. This can lead to older drivers spending more time struggling to read the poorly labeled instruments instead of concentrating on the road. Many people use the car......
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...Hang Up: It’s Not Just Your Life Brad Gardner Michael Hunter ENG215 November 4, 2014 Hang up: It's not just your life Although it appears to be a common sense notion, the differences in laws and regulations regarding the use of mobile devices while driving are not the same from state to state. No one person is a better-distracted driver than the next and because of this, all states should have standardized policies regarding the use of mobile devices while driving. Every day we can make a change; make better choices, to make a difference in our lives and the lives of others. We can make a simple choice to hang up our cell phone before getting in our car and driving. We can choose not to accidently run over a young child walking across the street on their way to school due to the distraction of a cell phone. It sounds simple enough to do; yet, every second, someone decides to take that child's life. They decide that it is more important to answer their phone or reply to a text while driving over the wellbeing of others. Distracted driving and its repercussions have been a growing concern since the first-day drivers began using mobile devices. The first cellular phones became available for consumer use in the mid-80s. Widespread use was not marked for almost another decade. In the early 90s, less than 4.5 million people used cell phones. Over the last 15 or so years the population of cell phone users has spiked to over 230 million, according to statistics from the Insurance......
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...Criminal Law August 12, 2013 Texting and Driving: It Can Wait Leslee’s life changed forever on March 4th. Leslee Henson and her husband David were involved in a terrible pedestrian-motor accident. They were not driving a car; they were simply going for a walk on a Monday morning in their neighborhood when tragedy struck. The motorist that was guilty of texting, rear ended another vehicle that struck the pedestrians. David shielded his wife, Leslee and took the death for her. In other words, he pushed her out of the way and he died while she survived and has to endure more than 5,000 stitches and staples on her head and neck. Bones in Leslee’s neck and back were broken. She had bleeding in her brain. Her shoulder was injured. The woman that caused the accident was 50 years old, late for work and was texting with her head down. In addition to all these factors, she did not have insurance which leaves Leslee with the medical bills. The car that she rear ended was being driven by a man named Fred, who witnessed David pushing his wife out the way and taking the blow for her. 1 So many individuals’ lives will never be the same because that lady chose to send a text. It has not been revealed what the message entailed but if it was that pertinent, than as a mature person she should have pulled over and taken precautionary measures. David was an amazing father, husband, uncle, and grandfather to 10 darling grand kids. Leslee did go home, two and a half weeks after the......
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...stopping one simple act could save countless lives. That simple act would be to stop being distracted by our cell phones when driving. Are we still willing to listen or do we discount or tune out the speaker and continue on about our business? The fact is that all states should have standardized laws banning cell phone use while driving because talking, texting, and reading texts distract drivers and lead to accidents and death. A brief history of the cell phone shows that “between 1998 and 2001, more than 100 million cell phones were sold. By the end of the 90's, more than 70 million users existed. At the end of 2000, there were over 100 million subscribers, so the 2000’s are the decade that cell phones became common” (Strayer and Cooper, 2009). It is also the decade that lives started to be lost due to cell phone use while driving. Today almost everyone has a cell phone. It is hard to imagine a time when we did not have cell phones available to us. Most people can barely remember having to use pay phones to make calls. Cell phones are helpful and convenient. The problem comes when people are so attached to them that they cannot function without it. The problem comes when people are driving killing machines and cannot concentrate on driving due to using their cell phone. [pic] (Miller, 2012) People are distracted by their cell phones everyday while driving. “Drivers who use hand-held devices are 4 times more likely...
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...English 106 November 24, 2013 Mr. William Lehman Solutions for Distracted Driving Driving is a very important thing to know how to do; it not only gets you from one place to another but also helps in different endeavors, such as grocery shopping, or in case of emergencies. This makes sense when you look at the number of driver’s licenses issued in the year of 2003. The state of California issued 22,657,288 driver’s licenses, ranking the state number one in issuing the most licenses in the year (StateMaster, 2004). Texas, coming in at number two, issued a total number of 13,498,071 licenses that same year (StateMaster, 2004). Keeping these numbers in mind, one would say that driving is one of the most important things in a person’s life. Achieving a driver’s license is a big deal that is worth celebrating in one’s eyes, especially if said license is achieved at a young age of 16-years-old. Even though driving can be a blessing, it is also a massive responsibility. If drivers do not take it seriously then someone may end up hurt, if not dead. The major way people abuse the ability to drive is by participating in distracting behaviors. There are various ways that a driver, young and old, may become distracted and therefore putting not only their lives but the lives of everyone around them in danger. Texting and driving is considered to be the one most thing that drivers do that cause them to become distracted, but this is in fact not the only problem that drivers have.......
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...Distracted Driving Sometimes in life “sorry” can become a magic word and fix everything, then there are times that saying “sorry” undoes nothing. Will saying “sorry” help when you crash your parent’s car, because you are too busy looking at your phone? What about when you kill someone’s child because you’re too busy talking to your friend and run a stop light? Will you say “sorry” to the kid’s parents and expect everything to be okay? Saying “sorry” cannot begin to fix some things and preventing those from happening by acting responsibly in the first place is the best you can do. I like the introduction technique with the hypothetical questions. However, you now need to transition into your thesis or central claim, and that central claim needs to come here, at the end of the intro paragraph. Ninety percent of car accidents are caused by human error – driving under the influence of alcohol and marijuana, speeding recklessly, changing lanes without signaling, passing through red lines, and probably most known of all: distracted driving OK, first of all, don’t begin body paragraphs with statistics. Rarely should you do this. Instead, remember that I want your body paragraphs to begins with subclaims. Secondly, where did you get this statistic? This is not a research paper (you’ll be taught proper research in Composition II). For now, we want you to avoid research sources except your interviews. . Distracted Driving is dangerous and can kill you and those people around......
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...Brandi Williams Assignment 5: Persuasive Paper Part 3: Possible Disadvantages, Answers, with Visuals Research and Writing ENG 215 Professor Julie Davenport June 14, 2015 Should regulations regarding the use of cell phones while driving be standardized? Over the last four decades, mobile devices have become the trademark of our society.cell phones and other mobile devices have inundated our society At any given time; we can see drivers talking or texting in a moving vehicle. According to Brenner (2013), 87% of American adults and 78% of teenagers own a cell phone. The scary part is that almost two-thirds of cell phone possessorss’ are distracted by talking or texting and while they drive. This action makes distracted driving one of the leading causes of vehicle crashes (Klauer et al., 2014). Mobile technology is a great convenienceAt any given time, we can see drivers talking or texting. , but when we make a choice to talk or text while driving we put ourselves and others at risk. . Mobile devices have become the trademark of our society. I believe all drivers should be held accountable for their choices, regardless of their expertise or the place, and the governing regulations should be the same across state lines. It is a great convenience to have a cell phone. A person is in constant touch to others when equipped with one. Today’s cell phones are extremely advanced and have wonderful applications, to the point that they could replace an actual computer. When a person is...
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...Thomas J kingsly Student ID: AC150526 Course No. SP180.1.2 – Principles of Public Speaking Lesson No. 6 – Persuasive Speech Outline Dec 28th, 2015 TITLE: WHY BANNING THE USE OF CELL PHONES WHILE DRIVING SHOULD BE MANDATORY NATIONWIDE I. A. General Purpose To convince my audience that cell phone usage while driving should be banned nationwide. B. Specific Purpose To inform the audience of the significant danger of using a cell phone while driving, and convey the importance of “getting the word out” to enact both individual and societal change, nationwide. C. Central idea The use of a cell phone or other mobile device while operating an automobile always results in a distracted driver, which in turn has been seen to cause serious accidents, including many fatalities. These tragedies are entirely preventable, as virtually no phone call or text is so urgent that the driver doesn’t have time to pull over – or have another passenger operate the mobile device. II. Introduction 72% of drivers with cell phones report that they use them to talk or to text while driving. They are aware of the many dangerous situations and also know that it is illegal, but in most cases, discount it. A. Key point #1: Society’s reliance on cell phones. B. Key point #2: What is a distracted driver? C. Key point #3: What does it take to enforce the laws, consistently, from state-to-state? III. Body of the Presentation A. Key Point #1: Cell phones are as common......
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...Distracted Driving There are several ways people are distracted while driving but the most common reason is handheld cellular devices. Cellular telephones have been around for several years now and have evolved so much in the past few. Some of the first cellular phones only had the ability to make phone calls. Modern cell phones are personal computers that a person can hold in his/her hand. A person can read his/her e-mail, surf the web, send text messages, play games, and still make phone calls. The problem is people are using these handheld devices while driving, which is causing big distractions. Using a handheld device while driving is dangerous. Unfortunately there is no immediate solution to the problem of using handheld devices while driving (“Transportation Business Journal,” 2010). There are several levels of government that are making it illegal to use handheld devices while a person is driving through the area that they govern. Last year President Obama signed an executive order prohibiting texting while driving for federal employees. It is hard to enforce the laws because people are finding ways to hide that they are using the handheld device while driving. A lot of time law enforcement doesn’t know that a handheld device was being used until they investigate an accident (“Transportation Business Journal,” 2010). At this time there is no cost effective way to solve the problem. Studies have shown that using handheld devices while driving is a......
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...Distracted Driving in North Dakota • I would like to lobby for the ban of use of cellular communication devices while driving for all drivers, particularly use of hand held devices. I would like to address this as a state wide issue in North Dakota, however, this issue can also be tackled as a local or federal issue. Cell phone use while driving or “distracted driving” is a public safety issue. Distracted driving is a major cause of motor vehicle accidents in both novice drivers and experienced drivers (Klauer, Guo, Simons-Morton, Ouimet, Lee & Dingus, 2013). • In North Dakota, current distracted driving law went into effect 8/2011, text messaging (only) prohibited for all drivers (HB 1195 and HB 1256) and under age 18, there is a ban of use of any electronic communication devices while driving, cellular and hands free (Hands free info, 2014). • In ND, violation of these laws are primary offenses, meaning that you can be pulled over for that offense alone. The current penalty is a fine of $100. In 2009, Rep. Lawrence Klemin, R-Bismarck, saw his legislation to ban text messaging for drivers defeated in the House on a 60-34 vote. The law would have included a fine of up to $100 fine and a 2-point license penalty for first offenders. Subsequent violations would have brought a 4-point penalty. The bill was modeled after Minnesota law, however people thought that this penalty was too harsh (Hands free info, 2014). • In Bismarck, ND during a 2 day sweep by the police......
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...Texting While Driving It only takes a few moments for anyone to open his/her phone and respond to a text, but it also takes only a moment for his/her life to be over with. Texting while driving is one of the most dangerous things that someone can do while driving. People only think about the excitement to respond to a text; but rarely do they think about the results. People shouldn’t be texting while driving for three reasons: it is illegal, it takes our attention off of the road, and it risks our life and others. Texting while driving is illegal. (Illinois Text Messaging and Cell Phone Laws) People shouldn’t be texting while they are driving because they could get into an accident and could face severe fines and possible jail time. Most states prohibit all drivers from texting and driving. Some people feel that it shouldn’t be considered illegal; that texting while driving is no different than drinking coffee while driving. They might feel that way because they don’t want to pay a fine but more so they don’t realize how dangerous it is. Texting while driving takes your attention off of the road. It takes your attention off of the road when you’re reading or sending a text. I sat down with a few friends of mine who have told me that they have texted while driving and some of their justifications were it didn’t take their attention off of the road because they only did it when they stopped at a light. According to a study by the American Automobile Association 46% of......
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