Texting while driving

Senators Seek a Ban on Texting and Driving

MATT RICHTEL Sarasota Herald Tribune
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090730/ZNYT05/907303003
Published: Thursday, July 30, 2009

States that do not ban texting by drivers could forfeit hundreds of millions of dollars in federal highway funds under legislation introduced Wednesday in the Senate.
Under the measure, states would have two years to outlaw the sending of text and e-mail messages by drivers or lose 25 percent of their highway money each year until the money was depleted.

“Studies show this is far more dangerous than talking on a phone while driving or driving while drunk, which is astounding,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, one of four Democratic senators to introduce the proposal.
Mr. Schumer said the authors were responding to recent studies that have begun to quantify the risks of texting while driving. One study released this week from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that truck drivers face a 23 times greater risk of crash or near crash when texting than when not doing so.

Research from the University of Utah, which used a driving simulator to study the ability of motorists to multitask, found an eightfold greater risk of crashing when texting. By comparison, Utah researchers showed that drivers using a cellphone to talk face a four times greater risk of crashing, about equal to someone with a 0.08 blood alcohol level, generally the legal limit for intoxication.

Currently, texting while driving is banned in 14 states, including Alaska, California and New Jersey, as well as the District of Columbia. The legislature in New York recently passed such a measure and sent it to the governor for a signature.
Regulation of the roadways generally happens at the state level. But the federal government has exerted pressure on the states based on the threat of withholding federal highway funds, as Congress did in 1984 to pressure states to raise the minimum drinking age to 21 years.
Mr. Schumer said that the legislation was essentially based on the drinking age law.
The Governors Highway Safety Association, a group that represents state highway safety agencies in every state, opposes texting while driving but does not support the proposed legislation.

“We oppose sanctioning states since there is not yet a proven effective method for enforcing a texting or cellphone ban,” an association spokesman, Jonathan Adkins, said.
Safety advocates said that such concerns about enforcement were raised about seat belt laws but argued that the value of such laws — even if they could not be enforced all the time — created awareness about the issue and set societal guidelines for the behavior.
The other sponsors of the Senate measure include Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Kay R. Hagan of North Carolina.