by Madison Starr

Created on: February 03, 2008

At the risk of having my sister, cousins, friends, and aunts chuck their cell phones at my head, I am going to wage war against my archenemy: the driver with a cell phone. I'm not going to use statistics in this article to aid my argument, nor am I going to include quotes from various politicians and lobbyists that give reasons for or against the ban. I'm merely going to state my opinion. I will leave you to yours.

I used to have a cell phone and I was guilty of using it in the car. However, I started to realize that I really was not paying sufficient attention to my surroundings. I quit using it before I could make a big mistake. In my mind, those that deny that cell phones have no impact on their driving skills are either lying or just plain ignorant. I have the same thing to say about people who have an alcoholic drink and then get behind the wheel of a car. That one is personal, though, so I'll save it for another article.

Since I've known about this debate for the past two days, I've been scoping out drivers on the road to see how many people were using their cells behind the wheel. I was also noticing how many of them had impaired driving skills while preoccupied with phone chats. Quite a large percentile was talking on their phones or texting with them at stoplights. I live in southern California, in a city with a massive appeal for tourists and a population, which has tripled in the past decade. The amount of drivers on the road is rising. The amount of auto accidents is also increasing; it seems, on a daily basis.

Yes, it's true, the use of cell phones only contribute to a fraction of the auto accidents and fatalities in this country. I know that many are contributed to drunk driving, eating in the car, applying makeup, reading, poor reflexes, fiddling with the radio, road rage, speeding, or plain old carelessness, etc. However, if we do not begin to do something to tackle these issues (even if it's only one at a time), then we may as well allow anyone to do anything while driving. There may as well be no driving laws at all if we begin to get lazy and negligent in our system. If we do not begin to map out consequences for irresponsible actions of drivers, then how do we expect to see any decrease in the accidents caused by one or more of these factors? Sure, there are rebellious people who may purposely turn their back and continue to break the laws, but there's also a few law-abiding citizens out there who may think a little harder before they pull

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