Effects of Texting While Driving Research Assignment (Essay Sample)

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Effects of Texting While Driving
In the society today, accidents have become a major problem among people and government leaders. It has turned out to be a critical issue that needs to be addressed quickly. Even though, the causes of these accidents must be established and dealt with in the strongest way possible. Distraction has been found to be the main cause of accidents. For instance, texting while driving is one major distraction. Concern has grown among road researchers, the public and government on distracted driving in the recent years. This is because distractions while driving contributes to increased crashes that lead to major accidents that result in deaths or leaves individuals disabled. Research has particularly shown how texting while driving is unethical and unsafe behavior among the road users because texting while driving is a main source of interruption. The problem occurs mostly among the teen drivers who have become more interested and attracted to communication technologies. This paper, therefore, focus on the issue of texting while driving and the effects of this critical issue.
The research on mobile phones uses while driving has majored mainly on the action of searching or dialing a number from a directory. The evolution of cell phone interfaces have evolved continuously to make input faster and easier: each number is pressed many times for one character only according to the standard numeric keypad, the software requires that each letter must be pressed by only one key. The texting act shares some secondary actions in the in-car but also different in some means. For instance, the driver has to input the phone number using the keypad with one hand while he/she is holding the steering with another hand. Skills on driving are divided among the two tasks, operating the device and preventing the driver from performing the driving roles example changing the gears. Entry to the phone number also needs the driver's attention and vision; when focusing on the phone the driver is not likely to observe what is going on in the road, the confusion may lead to lose of control resulting in an accident (Bendak 387)
Various factors, though, may hinder the performance of texting and driving performance and choice in this situation. The problem of driving task: For instance, the reaction to shorter messages by drivers when driving at high speed in comparison to driving at low speed, do they lower their rate? The frequency of texting is another factor: for example, how quick does the driver react to the incoming messages after an answer has been sent? A good understanding of the questions helps a lot in designing the better and safer systems: (Harding).
Texting while driving is associated with many risks. For Example, in the meta-analysis that was conducted on naturalistic and crash data recently. It concluded that the crash risks are more when using a cell phone. Also, a review that has been carried out on distracted driving concluded that mobile phones increase the accident risks to an extent. When one is using a cell phone, there is always the probability that the individual will react to the wrong traffic signals because he/she has missed the correct signal leading to crash. According to the survey conducted, most of the people admitted having texted and received texts messages while driving. In America and all over the world Texting messages is more famous. According to CTIA 2005 survey, 81 billion text messages were sent in the United States but these text messages increased to a trillion in the year 2009.Does this become a clear indication why the texting has always increased even when driving?
Legal implications are the other effects of texting while driving. Drivers found texting behind the wheel have received large penalties. In 2011, New York State gave the police the force to stop anyone who was found texting while driving and also they were instructed to deduct points from the individual‘s license when found breaking this law. This law was hence copied by other states that imposed fines to reduce the number of texting while driving by many people (Rosenberger 53).
Several other reasons disagree with texting while driving. Texting while driving is referred to as multitasking activity because it requires the drivers to shift their focus from the task of driving as it raises the cognitive workload of the operator and shift their attention to texting. Driving requires attentiveness because it is a sensitive role and lack of this focus can result in the distraction that can cause an accident. However, the driver himself at some instances can make a choice on the strategy to adopt, for example, interleaving attention to driving and dialing a number at a time or carrying the activities on the device without interleaving attention completely (Rosenberger 59).
In conclusion, detrimental eff...