Texas for or against texting?

Tom Benning’s article in the Dallas Morning News, titled “Is Texas Right for Not Banning Texting-While-Driving Statewide”, one can expect to feel a little overwhelmed, a tad bored, and a bit of confusion. The paper is a metropolitan Texas newspaper based out of the Dallas area. With an enormous reader-base, one can expect that this platform to reach so many would incite more organization and a clear and concise argument. I wish that he had taken the time to define the differences between a “text ban” and “hands-free requirement” and made that more forward and cut and dry. Obviously, a text ban is going to aim to stop people from texting behind the wheel, but I would like to see the author really break it down more than that. I wanted him to go into the data between the different types of bans and show me evidence either supporting or dismissing the claim that banning texting while driving is making our roads safe. Instead, he slinks around, talking in circles, and claiming that the data is unmoving and unreliable because we are basically waiting for people to get into car wrecks and then tell the officer “I’m sorry, sir, but I was talking on the phone to my cousin Stacey about the difference between jelly and jam”. While I definitely understand that it is very difficult to enforce text bans and hands-free legislature, he could have gone back and looked at statistics as to how many car wrecks there were before cell-phones, like in the 1970’s. He could have compared many years leading up to now to show a definite increase or decrease, or possibly even a plateau in the number of collisions per year, while still being sure to make allowances in the data here and there for the ever-changing and infinite number of variables such as improvements of mechanics on the cars to help up stop more quickly or avoid a wreck easier, the increase in population, the technology used in the reflective paint used to paint stripes; anything! It would not have been very cut and dry, but it at least would have shown some insight and reflection. Common sense tells me that, yes, car + phone = bad idea, but I feel like you shouldn’t write an article about that including data as a persuasive argument if you don’t seem too eager to interpret the data yourself.
At one point in the article Bennings points out “the new ordinance resulted in 551 tickets in February alone. In all of last year, Austin police wrote 688 citations for the texting ban.” I feel like he could have easily taken the position of “upping citations is an action that may or may not actually have numbers proving that safety has also increased, but it definitely increases revenue for the city. We can put in more bike lanes/crosswalks/pedestrian bridges/stoplights/etc. with that money to further ensure the safety of our people”. That is an idea that is more easily expressed than a spreadsheet and shows more forethought. People are more likely to support something like the hands-free restriction if they see the good that it could potentially bring to the community than they are by seeing conflicting data pertaining to the topic.