Should texting while driving have the same penalty as drunk driving?
My parents told me a story of when they saw an accident happen here in Qatar. They were coming back from Villagio, when they were at the traffic light and they saw a car crash into another. One of the cars had crossed the red traffic light without paying attention to the other cars. Everyone in the car died. In one of the cars there were the three women, and one of them was pregnant. They all died after a distracted driver crashed into them. They never found out why the driver passed the red lights, but the reason was probably a senseless distraction. Often drivers are distracted by their phones that are buzzing right next to them. Texting while driving should have the same penalty as driving while being drunk. One of the greatest causes of
…show more content…
According to the website, Edgar Snyder & Associates , “Nearly 330,000 injuries occur each year from accidents caused by texting while driving,” world wide. If you think about it, not many people have cars or are able to afford it. On July 29, 2014, John Voelcker reported that there were “1.2 billion vehicles on world's roads now, 2 billion by 2035” (Green Car Reports). I understand that this a statistic from 2014, but if you think about it that isn’t many cars for a planet that has 7 billion inhabitants.
Wikipedia stated that the “Global vehicle ownership per capita in 2010 was 148 vehicles in operation per 1000 people”. They also found some statistics on how many people were killed or injured in the US due to crashes caused by being distracted. In 2012, 3,328 people were killed in some sort of distraction related crash, and around 421,000 people were injured in a car crash due to the driver being distracted. Once again, all of this happened in only one year in the US! The National Safety Council also reported that “Cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each