In early 2009 California banned texting-while-driving in hopes to reduce accidents. Many other states are right there with California making it illegal for drivers to chat with their phones. Heading into 2011 it will be 2 years that the law has been in place in California, so have the accidents gone down in these past 2 years? A new study says “no, in fact, such bans are associated with a slight increase in the frequency of insurance claims filed under collision coverage for damage to vehicles in crashes.”.
The study was done by comparing accident and insurance data with states that have the text ban and states that don’t. The study actually showed an increase in accidents that involved persons under the age of 25. These younger adults are the ones that have been statistically shown to use the text option on the phone the most. A 12% increase in accidents in California had occurred after the ban took place.
So why the increase in accidents after the ban? Some researchers say that it’s because of the drivers that are non-compliant with the texting law. Being more secretive about texts on the road can lead to dangerous driving and ultimately, to more accidents.
As text messaging is on the rise, up from 1 trillion messages nation-wide in 2008 to 1.6 trillion in 2009, so is the number of states that are banning the use of them while driving. How much longer will the states continue to let the number of accidents rise before they take a closer look at how the text messaging ban is directly effecting that number and possibly look at an alternative solution to this problem?
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