Essay on Death by Texting: Why You Should Not Text and Drive

According to the National Safety Council, nearly 28 percent of all vehicle accidents can be tied back to talking on a phone or texting,

1. The National Safety Council estimates that at least 1.6 million crashes each year involve drivers using cell phones and texting and drivers who use a cell phone – either handheld or hands-free – are four times more likely to be involved in a crash.

According to Luke Ameen in his article “The 25 Scariest Texting and Driving Accident Statistics” on the website icebike.org, out of the 2.5 million car accidents that on average happen per year in the United States, 1.6 million accidents happen due to the involvement of a cell phone. (Ameen, 2017). This means that over 50% of car accidents are happening due to a driver using their cell phone while moving down the road also according to Luke Ameen (Ameen, 2017).

After analyzing how the brain and reaction time are severely effected by the distraction that cell phones cause, it is important to view the health effects that results from the car crashes. Injuries ranging from mild to severe, or even death, can occur as a direct result of crashing the vehicle while distracted by cell phone use. In the study by McEvoy, the objective was to explore the effect of drivers’ use of cell phones on road safety. In order to research

Motor vehicle travel remains the foremost mode of transportation not only in the United States, but in all countries, which provides a great degree of flexibility. However, for all its advantages, injuries resulting from motor vehicle crashes are still the leading cause of death for individuals under the age of 27. As many have witnessed, accidents can arise at any time and occur about every 60 seconds. When operating motor vehicles a person increases the probability of triggering an accident or being involved in one, with that in mind, the worst outcome can take place. Fatalities are a reality and the worst aftermath of an accident, as well as, the most devastating. Fatalities on the highway occur about every 16 minutes, according to

Over 75% of teenagers say “texting and driving is a “common” thing to do.” but when not only their lives, but also other innocent individuals lives’ are put into danger for no real reason at all, it should never be considered a common thing. “Texting while driving can cause a person to be 23 times more likely to be in a car accident.” according to an article by Kristin Marino. Why would a person put their life at risk just to reply to someone’s text message that could wait until they reach their destination? It does not make sense that most people are aware of this growing problem in our country. Yet they all think the statistics do not apply to them. If individuals would use some of their time to research and read some of the statistics and stories of others who have been injured in texting and driving accidents, they might realize it could happen to them at any point in their lifetime. The person on the other end of that text message would most likely rather see their friend alive because they did not text them back right away, other than dead because they tried sending them one text that could have waited until they had reached their destination.

The two most common way people are dying these days is from texting while driving. Statics shows that 1.6 million car accident happens per year. 300,000 injuries per year, so 11 teen death every day. That’s nearly 25% of all car accidents. The article “Distracted Driving” written by the CDC states, “Every day in the United States, more than 9 people

To begin with, the use of mobile technology and portable communication devices while driving, as opposed to other causes of accidents, has contributed to the most fatalities among licensed adolescents and adults. If one is devoting all of his/her attention to an electronic device, he/she cannot be completely aware of the possible dangers of the area, for one’s line of vision and overall attention has been limited to a small screen. Also, a man fulfilling a task on his mobile telephone has thus restricted the total amount of control over his vehicle to only one hand, making it immensely difficult to manage his path of travel. When a driver is distracted, one might unnoticingly exceed the posted speed limits, run red lights and stop signs, or even collide with a pedestrian or other vehicle, labeling it the most frequent and fatal cause of traffic related casualties in the

Motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) are the leading cause of death in US teens, encompassing greater than one in three deaths.1 Based on 2010 data, 2,700 teenagers were killed and 282,000 were treated in Emergency Departments (ED) for injuries sustained in MVCs.1 That equates to approximately seven teens between the ages of 16 and 19 dying daily due to injuries sustained in MVCs. Mile per mile teens aged 16 to 19 are more likely than those aged 20 and older to be involved in a fatal crash.2 People aged 15 to 24 years old encompass approximately 14% of the US population; however, males and females of this age group account for 30% ($19 Billion) and 28% ($7 Billion) of the total costs of injuries due to MVCs, respectively.3

How many accidents do you know that have been caused by impairment with a cell phone? When looking around an intersection, it is common to see drivers looking in their laps instead of the road. Multiple messaging apps like facebook messenger and snapchat are making cellphones hard to put down for long amounts of time. It is crucial to find out if cell phones can be linked to impaired driving. In this experiment, we will test the effects of talking on a cell phone during a driving test and see if talking on a cell phone will lead to worse driving scores compared to drivers not talking on a cellphone.

Simply because someone feels like they must respond to a text immediately is why many of the accidents occur and most of the time this lead to a vehicular accident that can result in death. The biggest age group affected by this problem would have to be teens aging from 16 up to adults aging around 30. In the end, no one benefits from this problem other than the law enforcement team who has worked so hard to stress the importance of no texting while driving and funeral homes that are being paid for burial expenses. The reason I say that the law enforcement benefit from the problem would have to be because this is an example of exactly what it is that they try so hard to avoid. Funeral homes benefit because most of these cases end in a tragic accident that allow the funeral home to prepare a home going ceremony.

For many years, there has been controversy over whether or not cell phone usage impairs one’s driving ability. In this essay, we will be discussing whether talking on a cell phone impairs driving skills. To test the dangers of talking on a phone, several things need to be accounted for. In order to make sure the test is valid and reliable, the researchers need to make sure the experiment has the right subjects needed to be tested, in the right conditions, with a control to test the hypothesis, or testable predictions derived from a theory.

However, cell phone use while driving has not only increased, but so has accidents caused by cell phones. In the January of 2010, Michael Edward Wolsynuk was texting and driving in the Victoria-area in Canada when he lost control of his car. He hurdled into the median and then crashed head-on into an incoming truck. Wolsynuk was killed in the accident (Mulgrew). Driving a vehicle takes the drivers full attention in order to stay in control of the car. A Nationwide Insurance examination approximates 73 percent of total operators use their phone. Also discovered was 87 percent of mature drivers consider that a driver’s capability to driver is damaged while using a cell phone (Hazewski). Drivers know that cell phone usage is wrong while driving and yet they do it anyway. The University of Utah’s Applied Cognition Laboratory found that the reaction of an operator of a vehicle while on the phone is comparable to someone that is legally intoxicated (Hanes). Thus, this shocking outcome should make drivers think twice before using their cell phone. Drivers can easily lose control of their vehicle. (Word Count: 262)

Although many of these new technologies are possible and useful because of the cell phone, there are some downsides that come with this device. One downside is the danger of cell phones usage while operating mechanical vehicles such as cars. Because cell phones let us be so mobile, they also let us talk in situations where we are doing something else. While a person is in the middle of a discussion, he can be distracted from anything else he is doing. According to study published in "the New England Journal of Medicine," the chances of getting into an accident while on a cell phone are increased by "four hundred percent (qtd. in Hua)." Another study that was done by scientists in the "transport research laboratory" suggested that driving while using a cell phone is more hazardous then driving under the influence of alcohol at the permitted blood alcohol content level. The study says that a person on the cell phone reacts half a second slower than an alert driver (qtd. in Wrolstad). Considering the results of the research, more legislation is needed for cell phone usage, possibly banning or limiting the usage of cell phones during situations calling for a person's full attention.

Cell phones play a very large role in most people’s lives, but the continuous use of them has sparked the controversy of whether or not these devices plague drivers. Improvements in technology and human dependency on having a cell phone has led to the increase of cell phone use while driving and crashes related to this behavior. Studies and simulations have been conducted to put the controversy at ease accompanied by state governments passing bans on hand-held devices. The magnitude of the issue of cell phone use while driving is proven by the articles “Cellular Phone Use While Driving: Risks and Benefits: Section 3. Risks of Using a Cellular Phone While Driving” by Karen S. Lissy, M.P.H., Joshua T. Cohen, Ph.D., Mary Y. Park, M.S., and John D. Graham, Ph.D. and “The Use of Cell Phones While Driving”. Federal and state governments should enact bans on cell phone use while driving because missing a message or call is better than a loved one receiving the message of the driver’s death.