Texting while driving is no longer a "new" debate, where people question if the act really is dangerous or not. No -- with cell phones now firmly engrained in our society, there is no doubt that whipping out your cell phone while you drive and texting a smiley face to your friend is amazingly dangerous. Some studies even say that texting while driving is more dangerous than driving drunk.
The debate now is more about how to prevent texting drivers, and the results have been mixed. Here in Austin, Texas, there are multiple laws that apply to texting while driving. The state of Texas does not allow anyone age 18 or under to use a cell phone while driving; but that ban applies to people of all ages in the city of Austin.
It's easy to imagine how distracting texting while driving is; but someone wanted to show people how bad it is in a virtual setting. So, a video game designer made "SMS Racer," a simple game that lets users race a car around a track as fast as they can. But there's a catch: while you're trying to break your track record, you will get text messages that you have to respond to within 10 seconds. If you don't, your track time is wiped out.
Such a simple (if inelegant) way to show that texting while driving is quite dangerous; but we still have issues with texting drivers. We can only hope that, in the near future, a revolutionary invention prevents texting while driving. Until then, people who are victimized in a distracted driver accident can rely on civil litigation to hold the negligent parties responsible.
Source: NBC News, "New video game shows dangers of texting while driving," Yannick LeJacq, Aug. 29, 2013
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