Put brakes on texting while driving

By Leonard Pitts

The amazing thing about the debate over the need for laws to ban texting while driving is that there is a debate over the need for laws to ban texting while driving.

In the first place, you'd think you wouldn't need a law, that simple common sense would be enough to tell us it's unsafe to divert attention to a tiny keyboard and screen while simultaneously piloting two tons of metal, rubber, glass and, let us not forget, flesh, at freeway speeds - or even street speeds. In the second place, if common sense were insufficient, you'd think lawmakers would have rushed to back it up with tough laws.

Think again.

The issue has been moved to the front burner recently. In late July, a study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute quantified the blatantly obvious: texting while driving is dangerous. Researchers found that the person who does so is the functional equivalent of a drunken driver, a whopping 23 times more likely to be involved in an accident or near-collision. And according to a study in Car and Driver magazine, the tester is a significantly greater threat than a mere drunk.

About the same time the VTTI study was released, four senators introduced legislation that would require states to pass laws banning drivers from texting or risk losing federal highway funds. Only 16 states and Washington, D.C., already have such laws on the books.

And last week, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced a September summit in which lawmakers, law enforcement, academics, safety experts, and other stakeholders will study texting and other driving distractions.

You want my response to this flurry of attention and activity?

Duh.

What else is there to study? What more is there to say? The danger is all too self-evident.

Enough. Ban texting while driving. And cell phone use, too. Because what researchers tell us is that it's not the physical difficulty of juggling the devices that endangers us. It is the distraction: a driver so wrapped up in communicating with a person who isn't there that he is drawn away from his primary duty: keep the car between the lines.

So yeah, there ought to be a law. And it ought to have some teeth in it.

If you sense here the zeal of the newly converted, congratulations. I stopped using my cell behind the wheel (I was never dumb enough to text) two weeks ago. Had myself an epiphany, I did: Was reviewing last night's game with my son really worth dying for? I decided it was not.

If it's an emergency, dial me again and I'll call you back. But the calls are hardly ever urgent, are they? That's not what this epidemic is about.

Rather, it's about this idea, new within the last 15 years, that it's never OK to be out of touch, unreachable, unreached.

Here's a novel idea. How about driving while driving? And for those truly urgent messages, I propose a simple solution: Pull over.

n Contact the writer at lpittsmiamiherald.com.