Txt U L8r

Time 2 Drive

Our View: Maryland's Law Banning The Sending Of Text Messages While Driving Doesn't Go Far Enough

It's Time For The Federal Government To Step In With Broader Restrictions

Maryland's law banning the practice of sending text messages while driving goes into effect Thursday, and not a moment too soon. It comes amid a steady stream of evidence that electronic distractions in the driver's seat pose a serious and growing threat to highway safety. Researchers have found that texting behind the wheel is about as dangerous as driving drunk. A Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study of truckers found they were 23 times more likely to get in an accident if they texted behind the wheel, a risk about four times greater than dialing a cell phone. When it comes to the myriad distractions drivers subject themselves to behind the wheel, from fiddling with the GPS to eating and drinking, this one - which takes hands off the wheel and eyes off the road - is particularly dangerous.

But the news about texting may be having the perverse effect of distracting lawmakers from taking up the issue of other dangerous (and in some cases, far more common) activities behind the wheel. Maryland's texting ban was the first major distracted-driving bill to succeed in the General Assembly in more than a decade of attempts by safety advocates, but its approach is narrowly tailored to just one activity: sending a text message. Reading texts is still OK. Using applications on your iPhone? Perfectly legal. It's not even absolutely certain that the law would apply to posting updates on Facebook or Twitter - or even sending an e-mail on your BlackBerry.

Given the difficulty of even getting that flawed legislation through the General Assembly, the odds of closing those loopholes seems slim. And the chances of tackling other distractions? Even worse.

Texting may be particularly dangerous, but it's also not as common as some other activities behind the wheel. For that reason, the Virginia Tech study found that while texting does the most to increase a trucker's risk, it contributes less to the number of crashes and near misses than other activities, such as consulting the on-board dispatching devices common in trucks, dialing a cell phone or even looking at a map. Using an on-board dispatching device puts a driver at 10 times more risk for an accident than an un-distracted driver, compared to 23 times for a texting driver. But eliminating the use of on-board computers would reduce accidents and near-misses by 3.1 percent, compared to just 0.7 percent for texting, the study found.