subject: What You Need To Know About Texting While Driving [print this page] What You Need to Know About Texting While Driving
Driving is an activity that would require our full attention. That fact is something that a lot of us take for granted because we might have gotten comfortable and used to driving without any accidents. This is the reason why a lot of people try to do other stuff while they are behind the wheel.
The problem is that some of the things that people engage in while driving tend to take away a great part of their attention. It makes them less able to react to what could happen on the road. One of those activities is texting.
Since mobile phones became common, they have caused a lot of accidents, but that increased even more when texting came along. While calling and talking on the phone when driving is already dangerous on its own, texting has proven to be even more so. When you are talking on the phone, your eyes are still free to look on the road, but when texting your sense of sight is engaged on using the phone as well.
That can be a dangerous condition when a split second could matter a lot already. A delay in your reaction could cause a lot of damage, injury and even loss of life. Just think about the fact that a car going at a moderate speed could travel several meters in a space of a few split seconds.
Consider what would happen if a driver who is engaged in texting, while going at a high speed, suddenly has to steer away from something on the road ahead of him a few meters away. The fact that the drivers eyes are focused on the screen of the phone would mean that he would lose a few seconds to react in the right way. In most cases that would be too late already and he would definitely hit whatever it is on the road.
Some would try to argue that the secret then is to slow down when texting. That is still not a solution, because it still takes away the focus of the driver which should be on the road and not on to the phone. Losing focus is something that should never happen when one is driving on the road.
Back to Basics- Perhaps the problem could be resolved once we start re-educating drivers as to the real basics of driving. We ought to start with the fundamentals by teaching young drivers that being behind the wheel is a full time task that requires their undivided attention. They should be thought that if they ever need to use their mobile phones while on the road, then they should park their vehicles on the side and then do whatever it is that they have to do.
That is the only way that we could educate the future drivers of how driving and texting doesnt mix well in the same way that driving and drinking does not. That is the future that we should be going towards to.
