Texting while driving = drunk driving

I know there are a lot of deaf people on the road who depend on their cell phones to communicate through texting but that is not an excuse to text while driving. There is no excuse to text while driving. None! More and more people are using their cell phones to text, including while driving. That continues to go up every year and each year more people are killed or seriously injured on the road because a driver was distracted for a few seconds at a time that led to an accident.

Texting poses serious, sometimes fatal distractions to all drivers, but particularly teenagers. According to the Centers for Disease Control, auto accidents are the leading cause of death for people between 16 and 20, killing more than 5000 annually. Increasingly, drivers are texting on their phones and this is placing others at risk. Recent studies show that text messaging is a growing cause of auto accidents in the United States. Motorists who text message have been found to be more distracted and more likely to be involved in an accident.

A new study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that when drivers engaged in texting while driving, their risk of an accident was 23 times greater than when not texting. This study showed that texting is much more dangerous than other driving distractions. The study also demonstrated that drivers spent almost five seconds looking at their cell phones while texting and driving.

Traveling at 60 mph and for a 4 second distraction texting on your cell phone you'd have travelled the length of a football field. As in this case in the United Kingdom one driver was momentarily distracted while texting and ended up killing a motorcyclist.

Anybody, even Deaf people, who text while driving is in the same league as drunk drivers. And to do so means that they are irresponsible drivers who do not care for the safety of other people who may be harmed or killed over a stupid texting moment.

I hope stricter laws will be enacted that includes jail time and/or the confiscation of cell phone depending on the nature of the driving (e.g. 10 mph versus 75 mph on a highway).

Hey, I got a message to all you drivers who insist on driving while texting, especially Deaf people who don't listen.

Text driving = drunk driving = immature drivers.

Don't text and drive. You may save a life, including your own.
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