Commentary

Reflections After a Tuesday Morning, I-57 Texting-While-Driving Related Accident


Commentary
By Gary Kopycinski

A driver passing an accident on I-57 shared something he overheard from an officer at the scene.

The driver I spoke with said he was driving on I-57 when traffic slowed to a crawl passing the scene of an accident. He rolled down his window as he passed what appeared to be one vehicle that had rear-ended another vehicle. He saw one officer placing a mobile phone in a plastic bag. As he passed, he heard one of the officers comment that the driver who had rear-ended the vehicle had been texting while driving and was traveling 95 m.p.h. when his vehicle slammed into the rear another car.

Texting-while-driving. Park Forest just made it illegal to use a cell phone for any reason while driving a moving vehicle. The Illinois State legislature recently made it illegal to text while driving.

That’s a good thing.

Question: why is navigating the Internet on a mobile device different from texting? Is dialing a mobile phone while driving really different from texting-while-driving?

Should the Illinois State Legislature follow the lead of Park Forest and a handful of other municipalities in Illinois, banning the use of mobile devices completely while a vehicle is in motion?

You bet.


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