Texting Ban

By Angela Hatton

Nashville, TN – Triple-A East Tennessee says it will urge lawmakers to make the highways "text-free" in the state's 2009 General Assembly. Automobile association spokesman Don Lindsey tells the Kingsport Times-News a separate law banning text messaging while driving is needed because texting interferes with a driver's perception and slows reaction time. A Tennessee Department of Safety study shows a steady increase between 2003 and 2006 in automobile crashes involving a driver who was either talking on a cell phone or texting. The association also cites a Harvard University and University of Utah study that says twenty-six hundred people have died in cell phone-texting related crashes, and drivers who use cell phones while driving have the same motor skills as people with a 0.08 percent blood alcohol content.