First Draft: Hand-Held Phone while Driving

Ricardo Martinez
Persuasive Writing
First Draft

Hand-Held Phones while Driving

There is nothing better than feeling comfortable and doing things quickly in order to have more free time or finish tasks quicker. Using commodities make us multitask with two or more actions at the same time. The usage of hand held phones provides at ease quickness while driving, but it might be more dangerous than ever before to perform both tasks simultaneously. Man people argue that drivers should not be able to talk on the phone because driving with both hands prevents accidents. Others agree that using a hand held phone while driving does not affect their driving, nor won’t bring harm to other drivers. What are the consequences of driving and talking? Is it really dangerous or people are just being paranoid? Is there a way that society could reach a mutual agreement with this issue? Maybe banning such activity will help resolve the problems, but it is not guaranteed to stop them at all. Drivers need to realize that it is not worth to die for a call.
Problems become more than just problems whenever a person makes a mistake and involves someone else. Hand held cell phones play a big role in this matter. Dialing, making a call or texting have become commodities and accident helpers for drivers. Today’s roads include more cars than ever, which means more trouble and danger is on the air. “In 2006, nearly 210,000 Washington drivers were involved in collisions, and only 1,300 admitted talking on the phone at the time. Eide, for one, says she regards that as "gross underreporting." “The Federal Highway Traffic Safety Administration has said "driver inattention" contributes to a quarter of all crashes (Broom)” People do not admit their use of the phone while driving because they are embarrassed of such actions and the consequences with the law might be greater. Unfortunately, it is difficult and costly to investigate the process. Government policies have experimented the idea of having access to phones calls from drivers the same day as their crash. However, it is controversial and citizens do not like the idea because it is an invasion of privacy. An invasion of privacy will be difficult to surpass and that is a topic that most citizens do not take likely. Another controversial topic among drivers that do not support the idea of banning hand held phones while driving is the actual use. Many believe that although cell phones do cause accidents and can prevent many accidents, there are other activities performed that could cause a crash and won’t be admitted either. People might multitask as well to eat, comb their hair, shave, search for an object, turn back to talk to another person, and many other things that they believe the government is not taking in consideration.
Government officials know the consequences and the risk that hand held phones bring. Although some drivers might get angry or upset at the fact that the government wants to ban this in order to save lives and prevent accidents. What drivers do not realize is that driving while multitasking is more dangerous than they can imagine. Professor Jon Dunloski has done research about this topic and came out with incredible data that clearly demonstrates the dangers. “ One person is drunk and one is on the phone and their results are pretty much the same” “Dunlosky said. Texting and driving is like being illegally drunk and driving” The study had drivers seat on a simulation driving game with an over the limit alcohol level of 0.08% of alcohol that if the police stopped a person over they would get charged with a DWU. Than, the study also showed a person with a hand held phone while driving the game and the results were similar. After performing this simulation with many different drivers, it was concluded that using a phone while driving has the same effect on slow brain reaction time like alcohol does. Since most alcohol crashes happen at night, it has become dangerous to use the phone because people that use hand held phones while driving might not drive as if they are drunk, but will have the same slow time reaction that is more likely to cause accidents and will definitely not help prevent them.
If accidents are not being prevented by anybody, who has the right to and who will? Only the government can. The government is the only organization that has the right to. The government nor police can determine if a person had the phone while driving because if they did, drivers can just grab it and put it in their pockets, purses or simply turn them off and it will not be possible to determine if it was used or not. Therefore, in order to prevent deaths it is easier to ban such actions and if people do not approve they should be careful not to get a citation.
The United States is one of the few large and powerful countries that has not banned this movement. Drivers might agree, others might not agree but there are easier ways to make sure one fourth of the crashers are avoided and that is by changing rules. As of now, it has only been banned in 6 states out of 50 and it will take many years to reach all the states, but more results and more deaths do not to happen for the government and citizens to realize the dangers that hand held phones promote while driving