Have you ever been a passenger in a car in which someone was texting and driving — or driving while scrolling through or posting to social media? Have you ever been that driver?
Given that road fatalities are rising in part from distracted driving, should it be punished like drunken driving? Why or why not?
In “Texting and Driving? Watch Out for the Textalyzer,” Matt Richtel writes:
Over the last seven years, most states have banned texting by drivers, and public service campaigns have tried an array of tactics — “It can wait,” among them — to persuade people to put down their phones when they are behind the wheel.
Yet the problem, by just about any measure, appears to be getting worse. Americans confess in surveys that they are still texting while driving, as well as using Facebook and Snapchat and taking selfies. Road fatalities, which had fallen for years, are now rising sharply, up roughly 8 percent in 2015 over the previous year, according to preliminary estimates.
That is partly because people are driving more, but Mark Rosekind, the chief of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said distracted driving was “only increasing, unfortunately.”
“Radical change requires radical ideas,” he said in a speech last month, referring broadly to the need to improve road safety. N.H.T.S.A. plans to release the final fatality numbers as early as Thursday.
So to try to change a distinctly modern behavior, legislators and public health experts are reaching back to an old strategy: They want to treat distracted driving like drunken driving.
… The most provocative idea, from lawmakers in New York, is to give police officers a new device that is the digital equivalent of the Breathalyzer — a roadside test called the Textalyzer.
It would work like this: An officer arriving at the scene of a crash could ask for the phones of any drivers involved and use the Textalyzer to tap into the operating system to check for recent activity.
The technology could determine whether a driver used the phone to text, email or do anything else that is prohibited by New York’s hands-free driving laws, which only allow talking on a phone while using a headset. Failure to hand over a phone could lead to the suspension of a driver’s license, similar to the consequences for refusing a Breathalyzer.
Students: Read the entire article, then tell us:
— How aware are you of campaigns that discourage distracted driving? Have you ever been in a car with a driver who texted or was on social media? Have you ever been that driver?
— Do you think distracted driving is “still socially acceptable,” as one person quoted in this article contends? Do you think it is as dangerous as drunken driving and should be punished to the same degree?
— What do you think of ideas like the Textalyzer? Will they work?
— Do you think developing distracted-driving campaigns backed by major television networks and promoted by presidents, sports leagues and corporations will have a bigger effect on people’s behavior than punitive laws? How do you think these campaigns could reach people your age?
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