Department of Transportation Summit to Address Texting Whitle Driving
The USDOT will be holding a national summit this week to address the issue of distracted driving. The summit could lead to a nation ban on texting while behind the wheel. Many Americans say they support the ban.
Ray LaHood, Transportation Secretary says followers will be able to view the summit on the department's web site.
If it was up to LaHood he would ban all drivers from sending and receiving texts.
The Transportation Department has said that concerns about texting while behind the wheel is growing:
"A number of deadly accidents involving text messaging behind the wheel have called attention to the dangerous problem of distracted driving. Last year, a commuter train crash in California involving an operator who was texting on a cell phone killed 25 people and injured 135 others. In another incident, a Florida truck driver admitted to texting moments before a collision with a school bus that killed a student. In yet another, only a few weeks ago, a 17-year-old high school student from Peoria, Illinois was killed when she drove off the road while texting with friends.
"Added Lahood: ''The bottom line is, distracted driving is dangerous driving. Following next month’s summit, I plan to announce a list of concrete steps we will take to make drivers think twice about taking their eyes off the road for any reason.' "
Truckers, who use on-board compuaters worry about the ban. They use the computers to stay in touch with their dispatchers. They say that would have to pull over in order to use the computers. They believe the computer is less distracing than a cell phone.
While lobbyists for wireless phone companies supports the ban, automakers believe that using a cell phone or other electronics in your car to communication can be managed:
Ford Motor researcher Louis Tijerina, a veteran of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, says that even as mobile-phone subscriptions have surged to more than 250 million during the past decade, the death rate from accidents on the highways has fallen.
"Some tests done in simulators suggested that talking on a phone, no matter how it's done, sharply elevates the risk of an accident. But so-called naturalistic studies -- essentially watching people driving around in the real world -- suggest that just talking, especially when hands-free, isn't as risky as the laboratory experiments indicate.
"That's good news for automakers selling onboard telematics systems, such as Ford's Sync or General Motors' Onstar, that offer the ability to dial and respond to phone calls hands-free.
"Tijerina says his work, and the work of others, suggests that in the real world, 'people appear by and large to be acting responsibly' when it comes to using mobile communication devices.
"Texting with your fingers and thumbs, however, is clearly a problem. A recent Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study found that text messaging elevated the risk of a crash [PDF] or near crash to more than 23 times higher than 'nondistracted' driving."
