In chapter 23 of A Deadly Wandering, it talks a lot about different studies of the effects of using a hand held cell phone while driving. In May of 2007, Governor Christine Gregoire of Washington signs the first state law banning texting while driving. It will carry a one hundred dollar fine. Other states grapple with whether to regulate cell phone use by drivers. Year after year, lobbyists from the major cell phone companies fight against the laws, arguing, among other things, that mobile phones posed no different a distraction than other tasks. Some of those tasks are like eating, or talking to other passengers, even though the data shows that cell phone use was the number one distraction leading to car accidents in California. Finally when they passed that law that made operating a cell phone while behind the wheel illegal, the death rate must have gone down in the following years.
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