Distracted Drivers

Background Paper

Among all issues that occur in today’s society, the use of cell phones while driving is a very controversial one. The question is based upon whether cell phones or other hand free devices being banned while driving. Technology has had a huge improvement, and since then, this issue has become a notorious one especially for highway safety. Some people want to get them banned, and others do not because they think it is a big and important part of their daily lives. As said by the American Cancer Society, “the issue was first believed to start in the 1990’s and now, research shows that by 2008, there were over 270 million cell phone subscribers in the U.S. meaning that that is more than 87% of the whole U.S. population.” Over the process of time, these numbers have been drastically rising, as well as the amount of Safety Boards that have tried to ban the use of cell phones while driving.

This is an ongoing problem, and because of this, it has been banned in over half of The Unites States, and other United States territories. It first became illegalized in Washington D.C on July 4, 2004, then Alaska, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Louisiana in 2008, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Mary Land, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia in 2009, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming in 2010, and Kansas and Kentucky in 2011 (textanddrive.com.) Apparently it has been an issue going on for quite a while, and laws are finally starting to be enforced upon the states.

There are several people that want to ban the use of cell phones while driving, but one of the major groups would be that of The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, The Nationals Safety Council, and The National Transportation Safety Board. According to research done by them, they were able to observe that people driving distracted due to the use of cell...