Persuasive Essay On Texting And Driving

Statistics don’t lie, and the statistics surrounding the use of phones while driving are shocking. For example, “at any given time throughout the day, approximately 660,000 drivers are attempting to use their phones while behind the wheel of an automobile.”(Chase). Texting while driving causes a 400 percent increase in the time a driver spends with his/her eyes of the road. A driver who takes his or her eyes off the road for five seconds to look at their phone will travel the length of a football field, blind. While texting and driving, a driver is 20 times more likely to get in a wreck (What Could be Done” Merely talking on the phone while driving breaks a drivers focus on the road and lead to “inattention blindness”. Unfortunately, in

This is why texting and driving should be handled in the same way seat belt and drunk driving problems were handled, with heavy fines and jail time as well as education of the public. After all, texting and driving is just as bad as being on the threshold of drunk driving, so why should it be treated any differently? The same thing that is happening now with texting and driving happend with seat belt use and drunk driving. “In 1981, only 14 percent of Americans used a safety belt despite 15 years of educational campaigns aimed at convincing drivers to buckle-up [NSC, 2012]. However, after a shift in strategy that included not only education but also enactment of mandatory seat belt laws and high visibility enforcement, the national seat belt use rate rose to 86 percent by 2012.” (Chase). Before appropriate drunk driving laws, ones that put a fine and jail time on drunk drivers, government spent millions on educating the public on the dangers of drunk driving, but alcohol was still responsible for almost 60 percent of all fatal wrecks. This shows the need for punishment for people who carelessly put others lives at risks by texting and driving. With the use of both education and enforcement, perhaps the number of accidents and deaths caused by texting and driving can be brought down by a large amount in just a few