by Lisa Hymas
A French lad texting in an appropriate venue.Photo: TopheeNearly two-thirds of Millennials, aged 18 to 29, admit to
texting while driving, according to a new Pew
Research Center report [PDF].
Texting while driving is “insanely dangerous,” Clive
Thompson reminds us in Wired. “Studies have found that each
time you write or read a text message, you take your eyes off the road for
almost five seconds and increase your risk of collision up to 23 times. The
hazard is ‘off the charts,’ says David Strayer, a University of Utah professor
who has studied the practice.”
While government officials fret about how to get drivers to
stop texting, Thompson proposes a different solution: Get texters to stop
driving.
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.
…
Dramatically increasing public
transit would also decrease our carbon footprint, improve local economies, and
curtail drunk driving. (Plus, we’d waste less time in spiritually draining
bumper-to-bumper traffic.)
Texting while driving is, in
essence, a wake-up call to America. It illustrates our real, and bigger,
predicament: The country is currently better suited to cars than to
communication. This is completely bonkers.
By all means, we should ban texting
while driving, or at least try. But we need to work urgently on making driving
less necessary in the first place. Let’s get our hands off the wheel and onto
the keypad—where they belong.
Considering that 37 percent of Millennials are currently unemployed or
out of the workforce, shedding that car should be all the more appealing.
Related Links:
Your car and your meat-eating: the biggest causes of climate change
Obama’s Partnership for Sustainable Communities will put the feds’ weight behind smart growth
