Tim Ajmani – The Corsair
You are sitting in your seat at a stoplight. It’s a bright and sunny day in February with the warmer weather of Spring rapidly approaching. You happen to take a glance at the car next to yours. You see them with their head looking downward and their arms busily moving. You look back at the light and don’t think too much of it. The sight of someone texting on their cell phone in their car is a very common sight in today’s society.
We have accepted the image of it so much that it doesn’t bother us; well, most of us. Cell phones have become so advanced these days that the average American’s lifestyle will suffer if they don’t possess one. We can store pictures, check Facebook statuses, send e-mails, and do all sorts of things on the internet with them. What most people choose to ignore, however, are the side effects of all of these convenient technologies. What do most people do when they receive a text message?
They stop whatever they are doing, open their phones and reply to the message. Even in potentially dangerous situations, like driving a car. Driving while texting is a seriously dumb action. When you are on the road you not only take your life in your own hands, but you also must consider everyone else’s. Seeing people have one hand on the steering wheel, and the other on the dashboard with their phone infuriates me. How someone can feel that replying to a text message is undoubtedly more important than keeping their attention on the road is beyond me.
This also includes talking on the phone. Whenever someone’s attention is taken off of the road, it increases their risk for hurting not only themselves, but everybody else on the road. Only eight states have laws prohibiting the use of hand held cell phones while behind the wheel. According to a few websites, as much as sixteen percent of automobile related accidents between the ages of sixteen and nineteen are due to cell phone usage. What’s even more staggering is that could increase as much as four percent per year. The fact that only eight states have cell phone laws while driving is just absurd.
With phones becoming more and more advanced these days the numbers of car accidents are bound to increase. Sure, there are consequences for using a cell phone and causing an accident, but does that really help the issue much? People will still be using cell phones despite the risks, and this has to change.