Texting while driving--ban it!

Yesterday on TV I watched a rally at the statehouse about H.B. 99--to ban texting while driving. I learned there's even an app for cell phones that will disable it while driving. Many people spoke at this rally, but none was more effective than Tina Yanssen who tearfully told the story of her dad's death in 2010.

Tina Yanssen's father was killed by a 19 year old neighbor texting while driving. It's already illegal in many cities, but wasn't in their rural Ohio area. Her dad had lost 165 lbs by walking after being told at Disney he was too big to go on the rides with his grandchildren. He lost the weight, but had postponed a trip with the grandkids to FL to attend his mother's funeral, but ended up at his own. He was 55.

At the time of his death, he wore a fluorescent green shirt with stripes of reflective tape. He walked along the side of rural Middletown Road, facing oncoming traffic. . . Another Unity Road resident, Whitney Yaeger, 19, was on Middletown Road that morning too. As she was driving — she would later tell an Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper — she was texting on her phone.

". . . she didn’t hit him, she ran over him,” Yanssens charges. “She left tire tracks up his right leg, across his pelvis and up his right arm. He didn’t stand a chance because she fractured his pelvis, pulverized multiple major branches of his right femoral artery, and bruised over 25 percent of his liver.”

He died early that afternoon in St. Elizabeth Health Center.

I googled the case to see what became of Yaeger, but without a texting law, this wasn't even "reckless driving" but a misdemeanor. Yaeger thinks even a misdemeanor charge with 6 mo. jail time is too severe for killing Muslovski, so she has chosen to go to trial.

http://www.vindy.com/news/2011/aug/29/coming-to-grips-with-the-dangers-of-dist/

Whether you're a pedestrian or a driver, if you see no hands on the wheel and eyes looking down, get out of the way--a driving texter is worse than drunk--at least drunks usually have their eyes open.