Our state legislature has recently passed a texting ban, while driving. John Micek, author of the Capitol Ideas blog, has an article in the Morning Call outlining the conditions of the ban. Looks like the car has to actually be in motion, so you can still bang out a text at a stoplight, or sitting in halted traffic. This seems like a fair compromise to me. I’m against this ban, but more because it’s been shown that it does nothing to increase public safety (people just hide the phone they are texting on, taking their eyes further off the road), rather than because I think you can text while driving safely.
5 thoughts on “A Guide to the Pennsylvania Texting Ban”
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They have a similar ban here in Washington state for texting and using a cell phone (without a hands free device) while driving. I still see people doing it all the time and I haven’t seen an improvement in road conditions around here. It’d be refreshing to see people take the initiative and just focus on driving while in a vehicle, but that’s a pipe dream I guess.
I am opposed to it. And prefer laws that tact fines on in addition when an incident occurs with a cell phone. I also believe truckers should be held to identical standards with CB radios.
I’ve found that some people cannot talk/text and drive an other can do so and still drive better than half the people on te road.
I’ve logged over a 100,000 miles while using a cell while driving. I watched the entire Star Trek:TOS (except for menagerie) while commuting to work just in the past 3 months. Actually, I’d argue it’s far safer than talking to texting.
Oh. I have no speeding tickets. I have one accident when I was 19. Two if you count a deer leaping in front of me. Neither involved a cell. And ironically most of my near misses are when I’m off the cell. Go figure.
Unfortunatley the texting ban came too late for one western Pa girl, a grim reminder of the distracted driving debate. The teenager was killed when her car left the road and hit a tree this past week. The 17 year old cheerleader was pronounced dead at the scene, police found her cell phone with a partialy finished text message on it in the car.
Another life lost to a habit so many feel is just a normal act. Another law that was for one girl enacted too late to save a life.
You don’t think that perhaps bad decision-making was a larger part of that problem? If she was absolutely determined to text, the law would not help. It doesn’t matter when it was enacted.
We continually add laws because the general quality of people’s thinking doesn’t allow them to process the idea that just because one CAN do something, doesn’t mean that one SHOULD do something.
This is a great example of that theory in practice.