What Is Texting While Driving

You are driving down the road, and you get a text from one of your friends. You look down to read the text. After you finish reading, you look up and you are in the other lane. You over correct yourself out of fear, and you crash into a tree on the side of the road. National Safety Council said, “More than one in four car crashes involves cell phone use.” People are dying every day due to careless acts of looking at a text for a second or talking with others on the phone.They are easily distracted and cannot focus all their attention on the roadwith a phone in their hand. Hand-held cell phone use in cars should be against the law for those reasons and more.Not only does hand-held phone usage affect the person driving, but it also affects other …show more content…
Most people know how driving under the influence is dangerous, but people, who text while driving, think that they have more control than that of a person who is drunk. This is why more people think it is okay to text and drive. Both of these are dangerous things to do, but texting while driving is more commonly done; therefore, causing more accidents.Texting while driving is six times more dangerous than drinking while driving is proven to be true in this testing experiment. When someone takes their eyes off of the road, they have to look back up. In the amount of time it takes for them to look down and back up, they travel a certain amount before they can react.Another key element of this is the speed. If someone were to travel at a faster speed, then the reaction time grows. Michael Austin did an experiment to prove this theory. He tested two people at two different speeds and the results were not surprising. Brown, the first tester, had a reaction time, at thirty five miles per hour, of .57 seconds after reading a text. This was compared to his baseline of .41 seconds. Brown traveled four feet more after reading a text message. Alterman, the second tester, had a baseline …show more content…
Cell phone usage in a car should be illegal no matter how old you are.It does not matter how experienced in driving a person is, it only takes one second for everything to change. People being injured or killed due to cell phone usage can be easily prevented.People could turn their cell phones off during their driving period. If people would wait until arriving at their destination before checking their phone, then there would be no need to text or call while driving. If a text is important, a person could pull over to use their phone. There are also auto responder apps that respond to texts a person receives while they are driving. People can use these alternatives, and the people driving would be safer. There would be no risks to other innocent people’s lives, if people did not use cell phone in the