Imagine a busy afternoon in the city. You’ve just gotten out of school and you’re on your way home.
Suddenly, that familiar tune of “Low Rider” emits from your pocket, signaling a text message. Thinking it might be your mother, you take your hands off the steering wheel and whip out the cell phone to check. Unbeknownst to you, the light has changed and you’re in the line of a semi truck about to cause an accident and a three-hour traffic jam.
This is only a possible scenario that illustrates a problem plaguing American drivers — especially teens — since the invention of texting and cell phones. Texting while driving leaves many teens vulnerable to hazards they should watch for, but they are too busy answering messages to notice.
“I think it’s a dumb and dangerous thing to do,” says Attera Heckathorn, a senior at Houston High School. “The people who (text and drive) don’t seem to think that they’re putting people at serious risk of getting into an accident.”
According to the Keep the Drive website, texting is the largest distraction for teens behind the wheel. In its 2008 fatality report, more than 49 percent of teens report texting as being a distraction. This rate is up from 31 percent in 2005. Also, 51 percent of teenage girls are likely to text while driving, compared to 38 percent of teenage boys.
“You shouldn’t text while driving because it endangers you and the people around you, not only other drivers, but pedestrians as well,” said Chantelle Shones, a senior attending Mat-Su Career and Technical High School. “It’s one of your jobs as a driver to look out for them.”
Chantelle has experienced this before. While on walks, she sometimes sees drivers veer a little too close for comfort to the side of the road or crosswalk near pedestrians.
According to the DWI Watch website, texting while a car is in motion increases the driver’s risk of crashing eight times more than that of a non-impaired driver. Truckers who text and drive are 23 times more likely to wreck than their co-workers who don’t. More shockingly, studies from the Missouri Injury Law Blog dealing with texting and driving show that texting at the wheel is equivalent to drinking four cans of beer, which equals a .08 percent blood alcohol level for an intoxicated driver. This means that a texting driver is perhaps more dangerous than a drunk driver.
Sgt. Randy Mcpherron of the Wasilla Traffic Unit says Alaska’s House Bill 8 covers any device with a screen, though cell phones and navigation devices are OK. According to Mcpherron, if an accident occurs because of texting, it’s considered a class C felony and if someone is hurt because of texting, it’s a class B felony. If a person is killed in a texting accident, it’s labeled a class A felony. Furthermore, people in the Valley have been pulled over and cited for texting because police are required to do so if they see someone texting.
According to the Keep the Drive website, motor vehicle crashes are the No. 1 cause of death in American teenagers, outnumbering fatality rates caused by drug and alcohol usage, violence and suicide each year. An estimated 1.6 million American teens text while on the road, and in 2008, more than 4,000 teens died in car wrecks, which is roughly 11 deaths per day. Because of this, it’s not surprising that when surveyed, 44 percent of teens said they felt more secure driving alone than driving with friends who text when driving.
Kendra Johnson, a senior at Houston High School, said texting while driving is too dangerous to risk, but she admits that drivers do it all the time. Johnson has been a front-seat witness a few times to text-intoxicated drivers.
“I know people who will sometimes answer a text message while behind the wheel, and it freaks me out because I feel as if they’re more likely to wreck,” she said.
According to a survey by Harris Interactive in 2007, 89 percent of adults find that teenage text messaging is “distracting, dangerous and should be outlawed,” but 66 percent of the poll’s contributors do so themselves, contradicting the message to teens that texting while driving isn’t a wise choice.
States have begun cracking down on cell phone usage and texting because they are the most common distractions for driving teens. Currently, 18 states and the District of Columbia have banned texting and driving; only beginning drivers are prohibited from texting in nine states. The U.S. Department of Transportation is pushing legislation to further restrict texting and driving in all 50 states. According to the Driving Laws website, on Sept. 1, 2008, House Bill 8 in Alaska banned drivers from using devices with a visual display. Doing so can result in a misdemeanor.
Despite celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey speaking out against texting while driving, these messages have failed to reach teenagers. However, the Gwent Valley Police Department in Wales worked with film director Peter Watkins-Hughes to create “COW,” a 2009 graphic Welsh short film that shows audiences the devastating consequences of texting and driving. This educational film shows how Cassie “Cow” Cowan and her friends’ irresponsible choice to text and drive causes them to get into a car wreck that kills four people in the process. “COW” earned honors in the Advertising Age’s weekly Creativity Top 5 videos and became an overnight worldwide Internet hit after being shown on the “Today Show.”
After its Internet PSA, the film recorded more than 1 million hits on YouTube by Aug. 25, 2009. With further efforts such as these, teens may finally realize the hazards of texting while driving.
Margaret Koeneman is a senior at Houston High School.
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