ANTI-TEXT-AND-DRIVE LAWS SAVE LIVES

2 weeks ago the New York Times reported that "enforcement of laws against texting while driving sharply reduces fatalities among teenage drivers." They further noted that this information came from researchers who studied data on 38,215 drivers aged 16 through 19 who were involved in fatal crashes from 2007 through 2017. The article further noted that in states with anti-texting laws (laws that allow police to pull people over just for texting) the rate of teenage driver fatalities "was 29% lower than in states with no texting laws." Some states have a watered-down version of the anti-texting laws that do not allow police to pull somebody over just because they were texting. They have to have another reason. But even in those states the effect of the law seems to have been enough to discourage texting while driving because in those states the death rate was still 15% lower than in states with no law at all.