World-Herald editorial: Ban texting while driving

Anyone who has ever done so, if being intellectually honest, would have to agree. The premise is simple:

To type a text message or e-mail on a mobile device requires that the operator look at the keyboard and/or screen. If that text messager happens to be operating a car, he or she has a choice — look at the screen or the road. It's not possible to do both simultaneously.

Thus results a “distracted driver,” which increases the chances of accidents, injuries and/or deaths.

The notion that texting while driving should be a “secondary” violation is a flawed premise. The idea there would be that “if I'm good at it, I can still do it,” because as long as a driver doesn't get pulled over for some other violation (speeding, running a stop sign, etc.), there is no violation. Proponents of that idea essentially say “no harm, no foul.”

But by the time distracted driving from texting or e-mailing caused harm, the cow would already be out of the barn, so to speak. The distracted driver would have already hit another car or pedestrian, run a stop sign or red light, exceeded the speed limit or otherwise driven in an unsafe manner.

Young drivers are particularly susceptible to the addictive allure of the buzzing or ringing of a mobile device when a text message arrives. And let's be honest: Anybody who has ever been around a teenager or a college student with a cell phone can't help but notice the impressive volume of text messages that are sent and received.

Last year, Car and Driver magazine “found that reaction time was much worse for drivers when they were texting while driving than when they were under the influence of alcohol,” the New York Times reported.

Also in 2009, Virginia Tech's Transportation Institute conducted a study that found that truck drivers who text were 23 times more likely to be at risk of a crash or near-crash event.

The Virginia Tech report stated: “Texting should be banned in moving vehicles for all drivers. This cell-phone task has the potential to create a true crash epidemic if texting-type tasks continue to grow in popularity and the generation of frequent text-message senders reach driving age in large numbers.”

The Nebraska Legislature will soon debate a proposal from Sen. John Wightman of Lexington to ban texting while driving in the state. In Iowa, the state House and Senate are working to reconcile their differences over restrictions on distracted driving.

Texting or e-mailing while driving should be illegal. It should be illegal as a primary violation, meaning that if a police officer observes this behavior, he or she can pull over a driver and issue a citation.

To wait until some other violation brings notice of the distracted driving will be too late, resulting in unnecessary pain, suffering and perhaps deaths.

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