Texting and Driving Is A Real Problem – These New Laws Will Help

Asim Nabi/Contributing Writer

Texting and driving is the new norm in the millennial world of wireless communications. The fear of being left behind keeps all of us glued to our mobile screens. We want to be the first to look at the feed or to reply as early as possible, even when we are in the middle of the road.

The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles is partnering with the Florida Department of Transportation and law enforcement partners to educate Floridians on the changes to distracted driving law with the Put It Down: Focus On Driving Campaign. The new law demands drivers to put their phones down and focus on driving. 

Section 316.305, Florida statute allows law enforcement to stop and issue citations on the basis of texting, email or instant messaging on the wireless device while driving.

Section 316.306, Florida statute is a prohibition on using the device in working and school zone. It totally denies a person from using a wireless device while they are in those two zones.

The first offense will be a $30 fine, not including any additional court costs or other fees, with no points against the driver’s license. If a second offense is within five years then a base $60 fine will be levied and 3 points marked against the driver’s license.

“The law will surely benefit a lot of students who, in order to escape from the citations, will try to put the device down and focus more on the road,” said graduate student Mayur Shinde.

Shinde also says he heard a lot of people saying that traffic in Miami, and especially in and around FIU, is too much. Since he rides a bike, he needs to keep an eye on the road and always look for careless drivers.

In a country where nine people are killed and more than 1000 injured each day in crashes that are reported to involve a distracted driver, distracted driving is not just dangerous. It is a weapon that claimed 3,166 lives in 2017 alone. 

“This is our utmost responsibility to put our mobile phones down while we are on the road, it requires a mere fraction of a second to slip and go off-road and turn the day into one of the worst for someone else,” said Suprabha Das, a research scholar in the Department of Mechanical and Material Engineering. She further said that driving in Florida is extremely difficult compared to other states where she has lived before.

In a research paper published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the authors examined the trends in the driving fatalities and their relation to cell phone use and texting volumes. Fatality Analysis Reporting System records data on all road fatalities that occurred on public roads in the United States from 1998 to 2008. There were two trends studied –

1. Distracted driving fatalities, driver and crash characteristics
2. Trends in cell phone use and texting volume. 

The results were astonishing – distracted driving increased 28% after 2005, from 4,572 fatalities to 5,870 in 2008. 

It was observed that distracted driving, as designated by the department of National Highway Traffic Administration, is any activity that diverts the attention away from driving. This includes talking or texting on phones and even eating, drinking and talking to people in the vehicle. Anything that takes the attention away from the task of driving is a growing public hazard, especially after the dot-com boom where a steep rise was seen in networking.

The legislators on the driving and texting bans should be paired with a high level of fines and scrutiny, in order to make them aware of the gross amount of fatalities caused by drivers.

Featured Image by Michael Babcock on Flickr.

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