Texting ban to save us from ourselves

There are laws on the books for a wide variety of things. While many are much-needed and well-enforced, there are some that just make you go, “Wait, they had to make that a law?”
Case in point, President Barack Obama created a mandate that federal employees cannot write text messages while driving a vehicle. That’s on top of the bill considered by the Senate to ban texting while driving nationwide.
Every society has to create “common sense laws,” laws that everyone should know is wrong to do but have to be on the books anyway for the few that need to be protected from themselves. The text message ban falls into this category.
Driving isn’t the most difficult of tasks to complete, but most people nowadays are multi-taskers — me included. The idea of just chilling out in a driver’s seat and watching the open road come and go isn’t as mentally challenging as, say, writing a column while watching Sunday NFL pregame shows and reading stories on the Internet about Saturday’s college football games, but that doesn’t mean drivers should be playing with the radio while eating and texting family and friends about their every move. It’s not only foolish; it’s dangerous.
According to a national survey conducted by Ford Motor Co. and presented to the Senate in September, 86 percent of licensed U.S. drivers called handheld texting while driving as “very dangerous,” with 93 percent supporting a nationwide ban on texting. Also in the study, which was published in the U.S. News and World Report, research showed distractions that take drivers’ eyes away from the road for an extended period of time were a factor in nearly 80 percent of accidents.
I’d like to think we’d all say “Well, duh!” and stop text messaging people when we get into the driver’s seat of a car. There’s enough on the road to keep your eyes on, like other cars, deer, moose, and with winter coming, slick roads and snowbanks. If you want to text a friend, here’s three novel concepts: call them, pull over and text them or just put the phone down and wait.
It seems foolish at this time that the Senate needs to spend time creating a nationwide texting ban when there’s bigger issues, like health care reform, taxes, war, climate change and reduced government spending, that our elected federal officials should be focusing on instead. That said, sometimes we just have to be saved from ourselves.