Just this ten percent can cause major traffic accidents and even slow it down due to drivers unaware of the environment. Banning cell phone use in the automobile would bring about some tension among the people who say they need their phone in the car. However, when looking at both sides, we need to decide what is more important: a simple conversation or someone’s life? Cell phone use in the car is just as dangerous as drunk driving. “[W]hether it’s hand-held or hands-free, [it] delays a driver 's reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent” (Statistics and Facts About Distracted Driving). A person on the phone may get distracted or carried away with the conversation, making it a dangerous drive. When on the phone, people do not look carefully and do not notice their surroundings. Instead, they are fixated on the conversation that they are having with the person on the other side of the line. Many collisions and even deaths have resulted from this careless behavior. There have been “32,000 traffic accidents caused by distracted drivers,” says The AAA Foundation of Traffic Safety that released a study by the University of North Carolina Highway …show more content…
In example, “[y]oung drivers who use cell phones at the wheel drive like the elderly – with slower reaction time and an increased risk of accidents” (Handwerk). But then why do we let the elderly drive you might ask yourself? Strayer at University of Utah said, “If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, their reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver who is not using a cell phone” (Handwerk). The fact is that even though we allow 70-year-olds to drive, by taking cell phones out of the car, 20-year -olds will not have a slow reaction time, therefore, reducing the number reaction