Persuasive Speech On Distracted Driving

Hello, I'm Jetta Stewart. I'm an 8th-grade student from CR Anderson. I'm here to inform you about how we can keep the roads safer by having a statewide distracted driving law for Montana. A statewide distracted driving law would benefit Montana because it would reduce fatalities and accidents in general.

There are many deaths from driving, especially from distracted driving. The article, “Texting And Driving Statistics” by Angelica Leicht & Heidi Gollub, is about distracted driving and death and accident rates, “In 2020, 396 people in total were killed as a direct result of accidents caused by texting and driving. That amounts to more than one death per day.” (Leicht and Gollub) This proves that distracted driving is a bigger problem

Well according to the article, “Montana Remains One of Two States Without Distracted Driving Laws” by Eric Berger, Kaiser Health News, “Banning texting alone does not make a difference, those researchers found. Oregon and Washington saw significant reductions in the rates of monthly rear-end crashes when they broadened their laws to prohibit “holding” a cellphone as compared with states that banned only texting, according to a study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Those two states also prohibited holding a phone when stopped temporarily — say, at a red light.” (Berger) Distracted driving laws help lower the rate of crashes and prevent them from happening. Although not all crashes stem from distracted driving most of them do. Furthermore, “Nationwide, about 3,000 people typically die in distracted driving crashes each year, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data, though researchers suggest that’s an undercount. While hands-free options are now standard for new vehicles, the number of distracted driving deaths has stayed relatively steady. They represented at least 1 in 12 traffic fatalities in 2020.” (Berger) 3,000 people have died in crashes due to distracted driving. Now think about whether we had a law against that and how many people would still be alive if we only had made a law to protect them. Laws are there to protect everyone and a statewide distracted driving law would do