The Problem
TEXTING WHILE DRIVING KILLS! Sending or reading a text takes your eyes off the road for 5 seconds. At 55 mph, that’s like driving the length of an entire football field with your eyes closed (NHTSA).
Today’s teenagers are tomorrow’s drivers. And, they are addicts. Texting addicts. CNN presented a feature on texting in teens entitled “Can teen texting become an addiction?“
CNN Editor’s Note: For most teenagers, cell phone texting has become a lifeline, but is it an addiction? Ask many parents and they’ll say yes. Today in our original series, “Texting 2 Much?” our Deb Feyerick talks to teens with excessive texting habits.
An excerpt from this feature made the key point:
The need for instant communication not only has a social component, but a chemical one as well, says neuroscientist and sleep doctor Michael Seyffert. “Neuro-imaging studies have shown that those kids who are texting have that area of the brain light up the same as an addict using heroin.”
Now, when these teens get behind the wheel, we know what will happen. They won’t stop texting. The law won’t matter and more people will die. Texting while driving is banned in Europe, Canada, and most (but not all) US states. It won’t matter. More people will die.
Enter Twitter, Facebook, and other instant contact social media mechanisms. These advanced forms of texting are about constant contact and constant message flow. They feed the addiction – and growth of these technologies is explosive. In the end, no law will solve the texting problem.
The Solution
Only a technical solution that stops all drivers from texting – while allowing passengers to text – will solve the problem.
The challenge is that for effective deployment, a solution must work universally and not require special phones, special vehicles, or special service provider hardware. These criteria are met by only one solution – our patented SafeTexting™ App and System.