The governor of New York recently announced that the state would be implementing a new plan designed to designate specific areas on the state’s highway for people to pull over and use their phones. Because texting and driving has become an epidemic in our country today, authorities are trying to create a new strategy that will encourage drivers to use their phones less while driving on the roads and instead take the initiative to wait until they reach designated areas.

Officials in New York have taken many steps in an attempt to decrease the number of people on their phones while driving. For example, the penalty for being caught for distracted driving has been raised from three points to five points on a driver’s license as well as newly improved undercover police SUVs that have been raised slightly higher than the normal SUVs so that cops may look down into a car to see if a driver is on their phone.

Even through all these efforts however, it is hard to say how effective these strategies will be in decreasing the number of distracted drivers. In a generation where your cell phone can practically function as your laptop, people are becoming increasingly more and more attached to their phones, almost to the point of obsession. It is not that the drivers are unaware of the dangers of distracted driving, it is just that they cannot resist the urge to check their phones for the latest status update, text message, or email while stuck in traffic or cruising down the street. Statistics show that being distracted by your phone while driving can potentially impair your reaction rate by 15 seconds, which is about the time it takes to drive the length of a football field. It seems that the only solution that would completely eliminate the threat of distracted driving is to completely eliminate cell phones from the vehicle. Although this is not in any way a practical solution, it seems to be the most logical one. Drivers all know of the threat that they present on the road once they start using their phones, and yet, people still continue to neglect the rules and put not only their own lives but other people’s lives in danger. In this day and age of technology, what will it take to make them stop?

Debbie Chuang
Ruben S. AyalaHigh School
12th Grade