A recent Virginia Tech study showed that drivers are 23 times more likely to get into a crash if they are texting. Plain old dialing and calling some one increased the odds by 6.  This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, as one can reasonably assume that taking your eyes off the road and a hand off the steering wheel will probably create a hazard.

14 states have already made texting while driving illegal. Several senators have announced that they will introduce an initiative to make texting and driving illegal on a national level.

I can’t really make the case that texting and driving is a safe activity.  However, this law will likely have minimal impact on the number of drivers telling their buddies about a soiree they are having that evening. After all, murder is illegal and carries a much stiffer penalty, but people still do it anyway.  If traffic legislation was truly effective, there wouldn’t be someone pulled over on Main Street every morning when I commute to work, and idiots wouldn’t make me fear for my life when I drive on the highway.

The legislation would require states to ban texting or e-mailing while operating a moving vehicle or lose 25 percent of their annual federal highway funding.  I fully believe that all states will adopt this policy, since no one likes giving up tasty revenue.

Will this program make a meaningful impact on texting while driving?  Probably not, but it may discourage some (which is better than none), and it will raise some more revenue through tickets, neither of which I have a problem with.