DOT to Host September Summit on Texting and Driving

The Department of Transportation will convene a September summit to come up with a plan to deal with the issue of texting while driving, DOT said Tuesday.

“If it were up to me, I would ban drivers from texting, but unfortunately, laws aren’t always enough,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement.

“We’ve learned from past safety awareness campaigns that it takes a coordinated strategy combining education and enforcement to get results,” he said. “That’s why this meeting with experienced officials, experts and law enforcement will be such a crucial first step in our efforts to put an end to distracted driving.”

LaHood pointed to several deadly incidents involving texting, including a train crash last year in California in which 25 people were killed and 135 were injured. The train operator was texting at the time of the accident and was among those killed, DOT said.

A Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study released last week found that when drivers of heavy trucks texted, their collision risk was 23 times greater than when not texting.