1 in 4 Americans are texting while driving

According to a new poll, 1 in 4 Americans are apparently text messaging while driving.

I don't agree with laws prohibiting talking into a cellphone while driving, although I do believe that's something that individual drivers should make a determination about on their own. But texting is completely different. It demands an attention that talking doesn't require.

Plainly put folks: it should be just common sense not to text while operating a vehicle. It's already caused one trolley accident in Boston, and a school bus driver is now without a job after being photographed texting while driving with a full bus of kids.

So far as I'm concerned, trying to text while driving is just as rife with risk as is driving while intoxicated. If one has to text while out and about in a vehicle, there's always the side of the road or a parking lot somewhere.

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My first-ever text message from a mobile device

Yesterday (Saturday) afternoon I finally broke down and got a new cell phone. At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I had only the vaguest sense of what mobile technology is capable of doing these days, like "Bluetooth" and such.

And then there is text messaging. Something that I have never done before in my entire life. Not even once.

Until tonight.

I got the X-tc from Virgin Mobile (and I might treat myself to an iPhone if... something happens in the near future), which has a very nice slide-out QWERTY keyboard. It's a feature I was particularly looking for since I'm such a fast typist, and I didn't want to "re-learn" how to do texting like most folks seem adept at doing.

Anyhoo, I tied my Twitter account into my new mobile phone, and a short while ago sent my first-ever text message from a mobile gadget.

Want to see it? Here it is.

"What hath God wrought" were the words in the very first telegraph message, sent on May 24th, 1844 by its inventor Samuel F.B. Morse from a line in Washington, D.C. to Baltimore. The quote is from Numbers 23:23 in the Bible, and was suggested by the daughter of a friend.

The first time I got on the Internet, those were the words that I sent in my all-time first e-mail. So I figured this was an appropriate time to use the phrase again :-)

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