Over the last seven years, most states have banned texting by drivers. Public service campaigns have also tried a wide range of methods to persuade people to put down their phones they are behind the wheel.
Yet the problem, by just about any measure, appears to be getting worse. Americans are still texting while driving, as well as using social networks and taking photos. Road accidents, which (fall) for years, are now rising sharply.
That is partly people are driving more, but Mark Rosekind, the chief of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said inattentive driving was "only increasing, unfortunately."
"Big change requires big ideas," he said in a speech last month, (refer) broadly to the need to improve road safety. So (change) a distinctly modern behavior, lawmakers and public health experts are reaching back to an old approach: They want to treat (distract) driving like driving after consuming alcohol.
An idea lawmakers in New York is to give police officers a new device called the Textalyzer. It would work like this: An officer arriving at the scene of a crash could ask for the phones of the drivers and use the Textalyzer to check in the operating system for recent activity. The technology could determine a driver had just texted, emailed or done anything else not allowed under New York's hands-free driving laws.
"We need something on the books can change people's behavior," said Félix W. Ortiz, who pushed for the state's ban on hand-held devices by drivers. "If the Textalyzer bill becomes law," he said, "people are going to be (afraid) to put their hands on the cell phone."
