Take texting into your own hands

A recent cdapress.com poll showed 85 percent of respondents - 1,371, to be exact - think the Idaho Legislature should have outlawed texting while driving.

Barring a special session of some kind, which is about as likely as Coeur d'Alene reaching 90 degrees today, the state's going to take a pass on doing anything about this phenomenon which ranges somewhere between annoying and life-threatening on most drivers' scales. But all hope is not lost.

Some cities have distracted-driver ordinances on the books, so clamping down on those with a hand on the wheel and their attention on their laps is merely a matter of enforcement. We feel the same way about drivers who are reaching for cigarettes that have fallen on the car floor; drivers whose pooches pretzel around their adoring master's mugs; drivers who turn around to bark at misbehaving children or to grab something from the back seat while motoring right along.

Ticket them, teach them a lesson and save them from themselves - and the rest of us.

But there's an even better approach, as related by an article in the latest issue of North Idaho College's student newspaper, The Sentinel.

The story details how the college's financial aid office and almost 400 NIC students and staff united in a promise not to text while driving. The basis for their pledge: A tragic accident that killed an 18-year-old girl in Texas, who was texting while she drove.

According to The Sentinel, that girl's mother has since researched and speaks nationally about the dangers of texting while driving, likening it to driving while drunk. Experts suggest a person is four times more likely to crash while operating a cell phone - hand-held or not. Texting raises the risks further.

We applaud the NIC students who have joined the nationwide campaign and pledged not to text while driving, and we hope the pledge is put before drivers everywhere in our community - schools, churches, businesses. It isn't just "kids" who text while driving; we see more and more, shall we say, mature drivers intently working cell-phone faces while zipping along North Idaho roadways.

The threat of punishment is what makes laws work, and the threat can be quite effective.

Better, though, are results when individuals decide for themselves that a certain behavior must change. That way, society benefits even when nobody is looking.