Distracted driving is a leading cause of car accidents and fatalities and safety advocates throughout the nation are observing our government's responses to the problem with avid interest. Improved a governmental regulations of drunk driving, motorcycle helmets and seat belt usage created substantial statistical improvements in accidents and deaths and now the Federal Government is beginning to take serious steps to stop the horrible consequences of texting while driving.

In July of 2010 the results of several elaborate studies on the impact of cell phone usage on distracted driving were released by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. These studies found that text messaging was the single most perilous activity on a cell phone that any driver can engage in and found that drivers of heavy trucks increased their risk of an accident 23.2 times if they were texting while driving, which can be shown in a court of law as a clear sign of a driver's negligence.

Clearly texting removes the eyes of the driver from where they should be, on the road, to where they shouldn't be, on the cell phone. To better understand the dangers of texting consider this: the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that those texting while driving at 55 miles per hour remove their eyes from the road for the length of an entire football field. This study caused the VTTI to recommend a complete ban on texting in any type of any motor vehicle and to forbid any kind cell phone usage inexperienced new drivers.

In response to the disturbing findings of this study, other scientific evidence of the dangers while texting and the concerns of the public, President Obama and his administration are going on the offensive by taking aggressive measures to check distracted driving and texting at the wheel.

The U.S. Department of Transportation hosted a national conference of 250 industry experts last September to better understand distracted driving and to raise public awareness. Ray LaHood, DOT Secretary, announced that the DOT is working to stop all texting by bus drivers, truckers and train operators. At the conclusion of the conference, President Obama signed Executive Order 13513 on October 1, 2010 prohibiting Federal employees from texting when driving to conduct official government business or while using government cars.

In Congress, two substantial bills were recently introduced: the Avoiding Life-Endangering and Reckless Texting by Driver's Act of 2009, also known as the ALERT Drivers Act, and the Distracted Driving Prevention Act of 2009. The former, if enacted, would require that the U.S. Department of Transportation withhold � of their allotted to federal highway funding from states who failed to ban texting while driving, while the latter proposes a financial grants to any state banning texting and cell phone usage while driving. Congress is currently studying these acts in committee.

In the meantime it is the responsibility of drivers to avoid the dangerous behavior of cell phone usage while driving.