The other day, I saw a commercial regarding using your cell phone while driving. Only a few years ago, cell phones were practically non existent, only being utilized by corporate executives and people who had the resources to have “car phones”. However, now, cell phones have gotten out of control. First, there were people getting into accidents because they were talking on their cell phones too much and not paying attention to the road. Now the problem isn t so much that people are talking on their cell phones. Rather, the problem is stemming from people using their cell phones to send and receive text messages while they are driving.
On a recent talk show, Dr. Phil had a young lady and her mother on to talk about her problem with driving while using her cell phone. As it turned out, this young lady had been involved in several near accidents and had received numerous citations from police officers because of her reckless driving. So, what was the cause of all of this? Text messaging.
While there are plenty of adults or people over the age of 18 who use the text messaging capability on their cell phones, the main demographic for those who abuse the text messaging while driving are those who fall in between the ages of 16 and 25 years of age. This is even more dangerous because the very people who are text messaging while driving are those who have the least experience driving. The last thing that anyone should be doing when they are driving is using their cell phone in any capacity. In fact, when you are driving, you should turn your cell phone to silent or turn it off all together and store it out of sight so that you are not tempted to look at or use it.
In the state of New York, there are now billboards that warn against using your cell phone to send text messages right alongside billboards that remind drivers to use hands free devices when they talk on their cell phones. And as for the police officers, the police are taking it very seriously. On my way to Long Island from North Carolina, I was driving on the Southern State Parkway and saw a police officer pull a person over who had just been using their cell phone. Additionally, my own father was pulled over three times in the course of one year and was issued a citation for talking on his cell phone without a hands free device my own father who should have known better!
When I asked my father what happened regarding being pulled over for talking on his cell phone, he claimed that he had his cell phone on speaker and asked the officer for a break because he was using the speaker option. However, the cop wouldn t let him off because despite the fact that he had his cell phone on speaker, he still had the phone in one of his hands, which meant that he didn t have both hands on the wheel.