Stiffen penalties for driving while texting

New York state banned the enormously dangerous practice of texting on cell phones while driving last August. Still, we can’t help but notice that loads of drivers are disregarding the law and continuing to text — cradling their cell phones between their hands, barely touching the steering wheel, occasionally looking up to check traffic ahead of them.

To those who continue to text and drive, we can only ask, are you crazy or just stupid? Is that message of yours really so urgent, so vital to your existence that you must get it out at that instant, as you’re driving, endangering not only your own life but the lives of others?

Moreover, haven’t you heard of a little thing called scheduling your time? Take a moment before you get in the car to send that text or make that phone call.

Resisting this needless habit is a matter of life and death. State lawmakers sought to ban texting while driving after five teenage girls died in June 2007 when their driver veered into the path of an oncoming tractor-trailer while texting. Those were five senseless deaths. Too many more have followed.

It is little wonder, however, that texting while driving remains as popular as ever, despite its illegality. We live in a hyper-competitive world in which we’re always supposed to be working, always supposed to be communicating with others. These days, multi-tasking is no longer good enough. You’re supposed to multi-task while you’re multi-tasking. And if you’re unable to do three things at once, well, you’re just going to fall further and further behind in your job and in your life.

Once upon a time, your car was a refuge from the workaday world, a place where you could turn on the radio, listen to music or a ballgame and take a well-deserved breather as you sped along the highway. But with the advent of the cell phone, the “smart” phone and the laptop computer, the car became a moving office, one more place to do business.