Wired Magazine has a new column by Clive Thompson with a strong message to texters: ‘Park the car. Take the bus.’
Texting while driving is a huge problem in the US. We know it’s insanely dangerous…That’s why states are frantically trying to ban it. Nineteen already prohibit texting while driving, and plenty more — including West Virginia and Missouri — will likely join the pack next year.
But I’m not convinced the bans will work, particularly among young people. Why? Because texting is rapidly becoming their default means of connecting with one another, on a constant, pinging basis. From 2003 to 2008, the number of texts sent monthly by Americans surged from 2 billion to 110 billion. The urge to connect is primal, and even if you ban texting in the car, teens will try to get away with it.
How does Thompson propose to fix the problem? His solution is drastic by any measure:
So what can we do? We should change our focus to the other side of the equation and curtail not the texting but the driving. This may sound a bit facetious, but I’m serious. When we worry about driving and texting, we assume that the most important thing the person is doing is piloting the car. But what if the most important thing they’re doing is texting? How do we free them up so they can text without needing to worry about driving?
The answer, of course, is public transit. In many parts of the world where texting has become ingrained in daily life — like Japan and Europe — public transit is so plentiful that there hasn’t been a major texting-while-driving crisis. You don’t endanger anyone’s life while quietly tapping out messages during your train ride to work in Tokyo or Berlin.
Thompson’s only chance is that the overlap between lawmakers and texters is still fairly small.
