E.+Texting+While+Driving+Is+wrong

Jim read his text message and it was the last thing he saw before the car came crashing through his passenger side, cutting his life tragically short. Texting while driving is slowly becoming one of the most dangerous activities done on the road. Over the past few years the phone went from being a unique and convenient device for the average American, to what caused that Americans horrible and untimely death. “After the world's first automobile-related fatality, which occurred in London in 1896, the coroner said: “This must never happen again?"(Sixwise). Texting while driving should be illegal because it is more distracting, is a major cause of accidents, and thousands of people are injured or die.     Texting while driving is one of the major distractions on the road today. When others text while driving their eyes are off the road and they do not know what could be happening. The reaction of a person is slower when they are texting compared to driving drunk. “At 35 miles an hour, Mr. Alterman’s average reaction time was .57 seconds, but while texting it rose to 1.36 seconds, more than twice his average reaction time of .64 seconds while under the influence”(Chang). While being drunk, as bad as it is, the person’s eyes are still focused on the road. Many studies with different people show the same thing, texting while driving is worse than drunk driving. Driving and texting is becoming the major cause of accidents. It is not only on the road, while driving a train a man in New Jersey was caught texting. In 9 years deaths caused by distracted driving has risen from 11% to 16%. Teenagers are the common person someone would think of when texting but adults do it just as much. “82% of adults have cell phones 47% of adult cell phone users report texting while driving, 27% of //all// adults report texting while driving”(Madden). With the combining of the 47% and 27% that makes 74% to the 66% of teenager’s texting and driving, being that the adults texts could be more important. Thousands of humans are injured or die from a person texting on the road. “In 2008 almost 6,000 people were killed and a half-million were injured in crashes related to driver distraction” (Snyder). Much more than three times that amount have been injured due to people texting on their phones. Each year the deaths and injuries increase because phones are becoming more and more available to the public. People, mostly teens, are more worried about texting than looking at the road, so they end up in a fatal accident. Texting while driving may be very dangerous but it is not the only distraction in the car. “Adjusting the air conditioning, heat or defrosting controls forces a driver to look toward and reach for the controls (often removed from the driver's position). And adjusting the radio or CD controls, searching for a channel and/or inserting or removing a CD provides additional distractions” (ezinearticles). There are so many distractions in the car that texting could possibly be small if all of the others were put together. Even so texting while driving is still dangerous and should not be allowed to keep going on. Every person needs to vote yes on illegalizing texting while driving to stop the death of innocent’s lives. Hopefully the unfortunate killing of others will decrease if the texting does not continue any further.