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Stacy Blauvelt Professor Schenk ICC 23 April 2010 Texting While Driving: Morally or Legally Wrong? The first cell phone was invented in April 1973 by a man named Dr. Martin Cooper. The purpose of the first cell phone was to be portable and to make phone calls. Thirty years later, cell phones come in all different shapes and sizes. Some can go on the Internet, and others can work as a GPS (Global Positioning System). Almost every cell phone that is being sold today can do these things, and can call or text message people. A text message is a message sent from a cell phone to another cell phone. Texting has become a popular trend among cell phone users, especially teenagers. According to Edgar Snyder and Associates, a law firm representing injured people, wrote an article on texting while driving called “Car Accident Cell Phone Statistics” and it says that 56% of teenagers admit to using their phone while driving, and 13% admitted to texting while driving. Among these teens, nearly 1,000 crashes occur due to texting while driving. This rate is expected to raise as much as 4% every year. With the trend of not only teenagers texting while driving, but adults as well, the country is starting to see texting while driving as a problem that needs a solution. The question is, what is the solution? Family can sometimes be a very positive influence on a child. A positive family can encourage good grades, healthy lifestyles, and good morals according to the website Forever Families’ article “Family Strengths.” A positive family can also encourage their children to not text while driving. Parents should make a contract for their children promising that they won’t text while driving. In this contract it should say that the consequences of texting while driving
were discussed and that they understand the dangers of texting while driving and won’t contribute to the statistics. Parents should also discuss with their children the consequences and possible punishments if they are found texting while driving that should be mentioned in the contracts. The parents should also discuss what could happen when texting and driving such as car accidents, tickets from the police, and even death. I interviewed ten people, five girls and five boys. When asked about the punishments they would receive if they got into a car accident because they were texting while driving, six of them said they don’t have punishments other than their car just got into an accident. Two of them said they would have to pay for the damages of their car, and the other said their parents would take away their car and their privilege to drive. One student said “My parents never implied to me there was a punishment if they found me texting while driving. I don’t even know what they would do if I got into an accident.” Peers can be just as influential as families. According to Webster’s Dictionary, peers can be defined as “a person who is equal to another in abilities, qualifications, age, background, and social status.” This means a peer can be a friend or a classmate. In Time magazine, an article “Text Messaging Behind the Wheel” by Sarah Lynch interviewed a Sonalie Patel, 17, who quotes “All of my friends do it…It’s like an epidemic.” This statement is almost implying that there is a peer pressure to text while driving because “everyone else is doing it” which is a social term people, especially teenagers, use to peer pressure somebody. On the social networking website, Facebook, if you search “texting while driving” at least eight pages come up that encourage others to not text while driving and there are less than two found almost challenging others to text while driving. In one of these groups, “No Texting While Driving”, the creators of the website, a couple of students in a communications class, post educational videos, statistics, and encouraging posts to not text while driving. All people, including those just receiving their
The average American spends one hundred forty dollars a month on car insurance, which is around eighteen hundred dollars a year according to CarInsurance.com. For example, a driver gets into a car accident because they were texting while driving. They hit another car and luckily the driver only gets a dent in his car. Paul, a 38 year-old car repair man in Bergen Count says that “the average price range to fix a dent could be from five hundred dollars or more if their insurance doesn’t cover the damage.” If the driver’s dent did cost five hundred dollars, that is four and a half months worth of their car insurance payments. If the driver is on a tight budget, those four and a half months being behind on his car payments can mean the difference of keeping his car or not. He spent all that money, and risked keeping his car, to send a ninety nine cent text message to another person. Drivers should learn to be smart about texting and that includes learning that insurance might not cover certain damages. Insurance shouldn’t cover accidents caused by texting. Texting while driving is against the law in New Jersey and it is spreading to other states. If insurance covers an accident their driver cause because they were texting, it is sending a message that if they get into an accident, that it will be okay because they are covered. Insurance companies should also hold short classes to their customers to learn about texting while driving and pass it to receive a discount or something similar in that nature. Drivers need to be fully encouraged not to text while driving, and that includes financially. Texting is an unnecessary distraction to a driver and if they get into an accident because of texting, only the driver is responsible for their actions. Texting has become a big part of today’s technology. Not only do teenagers text, but so do adults. It is considered the new way to call people. To send a text message, it only costs ninety nine cents, unless there is plan with a phone company, than it’s only a couple dollars a month. Text messaging is cheap and convenient. For this reason text messaging is not going to
go away any time soon. Drivers on the road are texting while driving every day. One day over the summer at 2 am, I was sitting in my front yard staring at the stars in the beautiful weather. It was a quiet night in my small town and the stars were out and I couldn’t stop staring at them, until I saw a car drive past me very quickly doing at least 50 miles per hour. The speed limit on my street is 25 miles per hour, so when someone is driving fast, I know something is going to happen. The driver turned the corner and the next thing I heard was a big crash. I looked over and saw that the driver had crashed into the tree about twenty feet away from our house. She got out the car and called a towing company to get her while my neighbors were calling the police. We all thought the same thing and thought that she was intoxicated and driving. When the cops came to the scene and questioned her, however, we discovered that she was texting while driving and was shocked because “the tree came out of nowhere.” She was lucky she didn’t get hurt. Her car was repairable and so was the tree she almost knocked down, but if she turned just a few feet closer, she could have hit my house. Her car could have gone through my house and destroyed everything I love in there. She could have killed my pets or my parents who slept on the first floor or even myself, where I was sitting in the front yard near it all. She could have cost us thousands to fix our house and destroyed our precious memories, all to send a ninety-nine cent text message to a friend while driving. Texting while driving may seem like something a person can get away with, but it’s not. It can hurt people, cars and property. There are many solutions to how to stop drivers from texting while driving, but the main solution in the end is encouragement.
