Texting Bans More Difficult to Enforce than Expected

12/21/2009

Law enforcement and government officials who want to protect consumers from distracted driving have their work more than cut out for them, according to recent reports.

A recent report by Reuters notes that even though more and more states and municipalities are passing laws banning texting while driving, many teenage drivers are simply ignoring those laws.

The wire service noted that in California alone, state troopers had issued about 163,000 tickets in the space of about a year to drivers who had been observed talking on their cell phones. However, they issued only 1,400 tickets for texting while driving through most of 2009 because texting is simply much harder for police and others to spot in a moving car.

This point is being raised at a time when efforts are underway in all 50 states, as well as in the federal government, to ban texting while driving. The practice has been found to make drivers much more inclined to end up causing or being otherwise involved in serious accidents.

Another problem confronting policymakers and law enforcement is the sheer number of text messages that are sent nationwide. According to recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of text messages sent on cell phones rose from 48 billion in 2007 to 110 billion in 2008.

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