Texting Kills Program a Smashing Success

In Los Angeles California, near where I live, it has been discovered
that the billboards with the message that "texting kills" seems to be
resonating with the younger generation. One might ask if distracting
young drivers towards billboards is wise, but that gets into a totally
different topic. Nevertheless, the Police Chief for City of Los
Angeles, as well as the Mayor are working to continue to remind teens
not to text while driving. They are also alerting adults, and those
with lots of driving experience, such as truck drivers to heed the
warning as well."In Iowa police hand out thumb bands to drivers
"txting kills" and the program appears to be having at least some
psychological effect on teenagers," stated one recent newspaper
article. And, I also recommend that you read a similar article posted
in the Wall Street Journal entitled; "Police Try to Thumb a Ride with
Anti-Texting Message," by Joe Barrett published on October 19,
2010.Apparently, they bought rubber thumb bracelets for teens - some
"30,000 were purchased by the State of Iowa, and the plan is working
very well and so, they are ordering 30,000 more." And the article also
stated that "in 2008 over 6,000 died in crashes involving distractions
while driving," basically cell phones, texting, and fiddling with
stereos, GPS, shaving, reading the newspaper, or putting on make-up
etc."Are programs like this working? Hard to say, most would agree
they do some good, but there is no way to quantify it and as of yet
there are no sure-fire research papers on this topic that provide any
real empirical evidence. Unfortunately, the number of "deaths by
distraction" in automobiles has not decreased, but programs and public
outreach strategies surely have.It is estimated that text messaging is
up 5-fold by teens based on communication company figures, but the
number of deaths have not risen. So, this is a good sign. Please
consider all this.