Texting While Driving Bans Go Into Effect

Have you ever been driving behind someone who is weaving in and out of a lane or driving well below the speed limit while texting on their mobile phone (or have you been guilty of this conduct)? If you have, then you are aware of the road hazards of such practices. To combat these dangers, six new texting-while-driving bans go into effect this month as state officials try to reduce the number of car crashes. The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that in 2008, nearly 6,000 people died in accidents related to distracted driving and 500,000 others were injured.

One of those states with a new ban is Georgia. The newly enacted penalty in Georgia for distracted driving is a $150 fine and 1 point assessed against your driver’s license. Other states have lower fines or no points and many proponents of higher penalties have argued that there is no compliance in these jurisdictions because of the low penalty. To ensure compliance, officials in Georgia went with a more stringent fine to ensure that the law was effective. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, fines across the country range from as little as $20 to as much as $750 for a violation.

I commend Georgia for approaching this issue seriously and aggressively. For many of us, it takes something terrible to happen for us to realize the implications of distracted driving. I think that as laws begin being implemented in more jurisdictions; we will see a decline in distracted driving related incidents. However, because texting while driving is so prevalent, wide spread enforcement of any policy will be very arduous if not impossible because law enforcement agencies do not have the man power to combat what has now become a nation-wide cultural phenomenon. Nonetheless, I think it is important that citizens heed these warnings and not wait for a law to be enacted to dictate their driving habits, but instead practice responsible driving to ensure that unnecessary accidents are avoided.