As a car accident lawyer in Tallahassee, Florida, I see a lot of college students crashing their vehicles due to text messaging while driving their vehicles. Tallahassee is the home of Florida State University, which currently has more than forty thousand students. Almost every one of those students has become addicted to text messaging, and they can’t stop doing it even while driving. Here’s a fact: Driving while texting is just as dangerous as driving drunk. One major research study concluded that texting drivers are 23 times more likely to crash than other drivers. The average text message takes a driver’s eye off the road for 4.6 out of every six seconds. A federal law has been proposed that would force states to ban texting while driving. This law has not yet passed, and Florida has not yet implemented a law against texting and driving. As a personal injury attorney, my position is that anybody who causes a wreck while texting is guilty of gross negligence and is subject to the possibility of punitive damages in addition to paying compensatory damages. It hasn’t happened yet, but I can assure you that one day we’ll see some college student getting convicted of manslaughter because he couldn’t wait to text. Drivers in Tallahassee need to be particularly attuned to possible accidents due to texting while driving, because college students make up a large portion of our population. All parents who have driving teenagers need to educate their children about the dangers of texting while driving. This is such an important issue that Democrats and Republicans need to come together politically to put a ban on texting while driving.

Jimmy Fasig