Texting While Driving

California has only recently changed its cell phone laws to make it so that you can’t text while driving. Prior to this change, you couldn’t talk on the phone while driving but you could text. How smart is that? After all, texting obviously requires more of your attention to be focused on your phone than on the road right?

The reason that I’m thinking about this is because I recently researched an article on 10 Tragic Accidents Caused by Cell Phones. These are primarily car accidents involving someone who was texting or talking on the cell phone whilr driving and hit and killed someone else. There was also the tragic case of the LA Commuter Train accident that was partially caused by the distraction of cell phones. And even one case in which a man merely went inside to go get a forgotten cell phone and ended up getting run over by his one car.

I’m not honestly sure how I feel about talking or texting while driving. I do think that it causes accidents. On the other hand, I don’t think that talking on a cell phone is particularly more distracting to drivers than talking to the three kids in the back seat or trying to navigate around an unfamiliar area by fiddling with the GPS system.

What do you think? Is it good that texting while driving has been banned in California? Should we ban other types of fiddling around in cars?