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Texting While Driving

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Texting While Driving

When sending a text message while you are driving your eyes leave the road for an average of 5 seconds (stoptextsstopwrecks.org). It may not seem like much time, but a lot can happen in that small amount of time. In five seconds a car can travel the distance of a football field. In five seconds a small child can run out into the street to grab their toy as you back out of your driveway. Since they were first introduced, texting while driving has become an extreme problem in the United States, and it is getting worse year by year. But this doesn’t have to continue. Texting while driving should be illegal because it is a highly dangerous action, and by illegalizing it, it’ll bring the world one more step closer to being a safer place.

In the book Cell Phones and Driving it stated, "6,000 people die a year due to drivers who are distracted by phones. That’s one hundred and sixty five people in one day, or another person every hour and a half …for example, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute conducted a study of cell phone use in a moving vehicle and concluded that sending a text message while behind the wheel makes the risk of a driver getting into an accident 23.2 times higher than that of a non-distracted driver. When sending a text message, the driver looks away from the road for 4.6 seconds across a 6 second interval”(Kiesbye7-10). 6,000 is a very large number, especially when it’s placing a number on fatalities. And texting was the main cause in every single one of them. And what makes this bit of information even more important is there are the details of an actual experiment that proves how dangerous texting while driving really is.

On the other hand some people see it beneficial to be able to text and drive. In the article, “Cell Phone Use While Driving May Not Always Pose a Danger”, it states, “… texting while driving

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