Should Texting Be Ban During Driving - Essay Example

2008) According to a CBS News correspondent Kelly (2009), the issue of mobile phone usage while driving has been a heated one over the time. In the United States, a split over the cell phone policy became evident when the Republican Senator Wagner, D-Chopee and the chair of the committee, Steven Baddour proposed to have a bill (H 3354), aimed at regulating cell phone usage within a car, with lawmakers and advocates terming the practice as the "new drunk driving." He also stated that all states needed to emulate the six States that have banned cell phone usage while driving, i.e. New Jersey, New York, California, Connecticut, Washington and Utah.

This is not to mention the thirteen States that have completely banned text messaging for all drivers, i.e. Arkansas, Alaska, Colorado, California, Louisiana, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, Minnesota, Utah, Tennessee, Washington and Virginia. (Kelly Cobiella, June 11, 2009) Jackson (2008) commented, "The American Insurance Association's members are responsible for handling 20% of the bay State auto insurance market". The association has declared that it supports the bills seeking to ban text messaging while driving, using an earpiece or speakerphone on a mobile phone, as well as banning of any use of any mobile phone for drivers under the age of 18 years.

The Statehouse News Service also reported on the 11th of June that twenty five people had been killed in a train collision the previous fall, which included the train driver who had been spotted sending text messages moments before the fatal crash. The person who had spotted him was a student, who said, "Even if you take your eyes off the road for two seconds, you could drive off the road or hit another car". (Jackson, Maggie 2008, pg 111-115)Scope of Use of Cell Phone TextingIn the today's world, text messaging is the most widely used data service, with over 35% of all mobile phone users in America, or over 4.

5 million out of over 8 million phone subscribers at the end of 2007 being active users of the short message services. In the same time, other countries like Finland, Norway and Sweden have over 72% of the population using the short message services (SMS). In Europe, an average of 85% by the end of 2007 and North America rapidly catching up at over 56% of active SMS users, clearly shows the scope of use of the service. This coupled with the 2001, Global Messaging Survey by Nokia indicate how addictive text messaging can be.

(Gogging and Peterson 2008)Other studies have been carried out by the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium in 2004, and others by the University of Queensland in Australia, which concluded that text messaging is the most addictive digital service on mobile or internet, even to the levels of addictiveness experienced by cigarette smokers, where the user gets into a habit of text reception and a need to remain connected known as "reachability" .This habit has resulted in SMS becoming widely used in delivering digital content such as news