A Texting While Driving Solution, concl.page 2
Before the texting craze came along, people were upset by the audacity of drivers who diverted their focus to punch numbers into a cell phone or to talk with one hand on the wheel. Hands-free and voice-activated devices, speed-dialing, canned or form texting, and Bluetooth were created. People crashed while spreading maps over their steering wheels—more efficient, voice-led, in-dash GPS devices were installed in vehicles as standard equipment. Alcoholics weren’t supposed to get behind the wheel when they’d been drinking, so breathalyzer ignitions were created. Long-distance drivers kept falling asleep at the wheel, so sleep strips were installed on the highway shoulders and head-position sensors can be installed to sound alarms. People flew through windshields during crashes; seatbelts were created.
But no technological advance can instill the good judgment to know when it’s time to pull to the road’s shoulder when we absolutely have to communicate.
Every freedom meets the restriction of the boundaries of another person’s freedom, and your freedom to drive ends where your bumper meets mine. It’s cold comfort to me if I’m lying in a hospital bed crippled for life in a car accident knowing that your freedom to text while driving wasn’t infringed when you hit me, or that you’ll be held accountable by the reckless driving laws after the fact for drifting into my lane of traffic if I’m too dead to realize that justice has been served.
So, how are freedoms allowed or restricted? Usually by the least able person’s ability to exercise them under any circumstance (the village-idiot standard). How can individual ability be tested so that the State can make exceptions? The same way that other driving skills, maneuvering ability, impairment, and knowledge tests permit the State to certify prospective drivers to capably control a 2-ton potential weapon—by the Division or Bureau of Motor Vehicles, a system that is already in place.
The State restricts licensed driving freedoms based on the operator’s vision and other handicaps, and provides additional authorizations to those with greater skills, such as handling limousines and semitrailer rigs. These restrictions and recognized abilities are annotated with checkmarks on the back of drivers licenses and even on the license plates so that handicapped people can park closer.
Install a computerized driving simulation station in each DMV or BMV. Beside it, a dock for a variety of popular phones that have a variety of keypads. Mandate touch-texting as the standard. Any driver who wants to TWD must prove his reflexes and visual multi-tasking abilities under a variety of driving scenarios. Every 5-second, uncorrected drift into oncoming traffic ensures a failing grade.
Those who want the high-skill freedom of TWD pay an extra fee to take the test, whether or not they pass, and an extra fee for the TWD privilege when they successfully complete the test, like the extra fee of buying vanity plates. These fees pay for the simulation stations. Drivers licenses are revised to include another checkbox line item on the reverse that is checked for those drivers who pass the touch-texting tests. They’ll also be issued a special set of plates with an icon or a distance barcode that allows law enforcement to easily decide not to pull over a texting driver, assuming that the law banning TWD can be repealed.
This same system can be used for drivers with high skill at driving fast, with a left crescent icon like the rounded edge of a speedometer, with curving stacked numbers—10, 20, and 30, and then an up-arrow to indicate that the driver has authorization to drive 10 miles over the speed limit in nonresidential areas, for instance.
Any driver who texts while driving who is using another driver’s tagged vehicle faces huge penalties, just as any alcoholic faces huge penalties if he drives drunk and is pulled over.
Some unruly teens will still drink, drive, and text who have and haven’t been authorized to TWD, and their phones will display messages like, “OMG jst about 2 crsh into a pol”. Rescue crews will still read text message fragments on the phones of drivers that they’re extricating from smashed vehicles. People will still exercise poor judgment and cause accidents, whether it’s slapping at kids in the back seat, eating a hoagie, or shaving while driving.
The State recognizes good judgment and measured ability when it issues concealed weapons carry permits. The same recognition can be extended to good drivers who exercise good judgment while simultaneously texting so skillfully that their skill even compensates for bad judgment, which is a maturity trait that can’t be legislated away.
Not every accident can be prevented, but some of our freedoms can be demonstrably earned and preserved, with a little system-tweaking and ingenuity.