Texting laws continue to spread around the country
More states will soon have anti-texting-while-driving laws go into effect in an attempt to reduce the number of car accident injuries, according to an NPR report. Six laws will go into effect in just the next month, including a ban in Georgia.
Missouri is among the more than thirty states with at least some type of texting ban. Missouri's law is only a partial ban, however, restricting texting by drivers under 21. Tractor trailer drivers have also been banned from texting under a recent federal regulation.
Georgia's new law is a total texting ban, according to the NPR report, and will allow cell phone records to be subpoenaed in some instances after a serious car crash.
The wave of laws is in response to a growing problem of distracted driving. The Department of Transportation says that accidents caused by distracted driving resulted in 6,000 deaths and more than 500,000 injuries in 2008.
The report says even though the laws are getting tougher, the statistics haven't shown much improvement in states with texting bans. A study conducted by the Highway Loss Data Institute looked at the effect of anti-texting laws in three states and Washington, D.C. and concluded that there has been little to no reduction in accidents due to the new laws. Previous studies have shown clearly that texting or talking on a cell phone while driving increases the chance for an accident, yet laws curbing this behavior have yet to garner results. This may simply be due to the fact that people are ignoring the new laws and continuing to use cell phones while driving.
As more state laws go into effect and more research is done, a clearer picture should evolve around the issue of distracted driving and how we can limit its consequences.
