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In the waning days of 1992, Neil Papworth, a young engineer working for the telecommunications company Airwide Solutions in Britain, wished his friend Richard Jarvis a "Merry Christmas." The sentiment, of course, was far from unique, but the method by which Papworth sent his holiday greeting was unprecedented. Papworth had typed out the two-word message into his computer, then sent it directly into Jarvis's cellular phone, where it appeared on the screen mere moments after being transmitted. It was the first successful text message ever sent. 

Since then, the use of cellular phones has grown exponentially. Once viewed as a luxury item for the wealthy, cell phones are now considered an essential part of everyday life. The rise of text messaging trailed the growth of the cellular phone market slightly, primarily due to technological limitations. But by around 2005, text messaging had become an indispensable feature of cell phones and an ingrained part of U.S. consumer culture. 

The turning point in the United States, researchers say—the approximate moment when text messaging overtook cell-phone talking in popularity—occurred toward the end of 2007. According to Nielsen Mobile, a research firm that tracks wireless technology usage, the average American was sending and receiving approximately 218 text messages each month by the fourth quarter of 2007, compared with a monthly average of 213 cell phone calls placed and received. It was the first time Americans had used their cell phones more for texting than for talking, a trend that seems unlikely to reverse any time soon.

Today, cell phone owners can use text messages to buy concert tickets, make restaurant reservations or vote for their favorite American Idol contestants. Many organizations, ranging from mass transit authorities to weather forecasting services, offer consumers the chance to subscribe to text message alerts, notifying cell phone users of subway delays or approaching storm systems. In 2008, then Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D, Illinois) announced his choice of then Senator Joseph Biden (D, Delaware) as his running mate via a mass text message to supporters. Nearly two years later, in January 2010, the American Red Cross collected more than $32 million in donations to help the victims of a devastating Haitian earthquake through a widely publicized text-message campaign.

Although users of text messaging consider it a great convenience, many experts have argued that that convenience has come with a price. Specifically, some people have become compulsive texters, sending and reading messages at inappropriate times—particularly while driving a car.

Polls show that the vast majority of U.S. drivers—as many as 95 percent, according to a 2009 opinion poll published by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety—recognize that texting while driving is unacceptable behavior. The same poll found that 87 percent of drivers in the U.S. consider texting while driving to be a "very serious" safety threat. But other polls suggest that, despite their general disapproval of texting while driving, Americans continue to do it. Nearly half of those who said they were regular users of text messaging, 47 percent, have admitted to texting while driving a car, according to a June 2010 poll conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Numerous studies appear to confirm the broadly held perception that texting while driving is dangerous. Perhaps the most notable of the studies was published in July 2009 by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute in Blacksburg. Researchers installed video cameras in the cabs of long-haul shipping trucks, recording more than 18 months of footage, during which the truck drivers traveled more than 6 million miles. The researchers then analyzed the tapes, checking to see under what conditions the drivers crashed their trucks or were involved in close calls.

They found that the drivers' likelihood of getting into a collision or barely avoiding one increased 23-fold whenever they looked down at their phones to type or read a text message. They also found that, on average, texting caused drivers to take their eyes off the road for a full five seconds—approximately the length of time it takes to drive across an entire football field, end zone to end zone, at highway speed. According to the researchers, those findings are applicable to drivers of all types of vehicles, not just large trucks.

Other studies have determined texting to be a considerable distraction while driving, although not nearly to the same extent as the Virginia Tech study. Researchers at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City conducted their own driving-while-texting study, in which college students sent text messages while operating a sophisticated driving simulator. The study found that those students were eight times more likely to crash while texting. David Strayer, a University of Utah psychology professor and a coauthor of the texting-while-driving study, attributes the difference between the results of his study and the Virginia Tech findings to the fact that college students are likely to be better multitaskers than truck drivers, and the fact that trucks are more complicated to operate than ordinary cars. 

Studies such as those conducted by researchers at Virginia Tech and the University of Utah—combined with countless anecdotal reports of fatal car crashes caused by texting motorists—have prompted many state lawmakers to take action. In May 2007, Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire (D) signed the country's first state law specifically prohibiting texting while driving. As of September 2010, an additional 29 states have passed their own texting-while-driving bans, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. Eleven of those laws were passed in 2010 alone.

The laws vary in many ways. For example, in four states, texting while driving is considered to be a secondary offense; law-enforcement officials can charge motorists with texting while driving only after they first observe them committing another offense (such as reckless driving). The other states that ban texting while driving treat it as a primary offense—i.e., texting while behind the wheel is reason enough to pull over a driver.

Penalties for texting while driving also vary drastically by state. In California, for instance, the punishment is relatively light; drivers who are caught texting there are subject to a $20 fine for their first offense, and a $50 fine for each subsequent conviction. Maryland, meanwhile, subjects violators of its texting-while-driving law to fines of up to $500.

The penalty for texting and driving in Utah, however, can be much more severe. Offenders could be fined up to $750 and even face as many as three months in jail. Additionally, if a texting motorist in Utah causes a crash that results in an injury or death, he or she could be charged with a felony, fined up to $10,000, and made to serve a maximum of 15 years in prison. Utah's texting-while-driving law is widely considered to be the toughest in the country.

In July 2009, shortly after the publication of the Virginia Tech study, four Democratic senators introduced a bill that would go a long way toward banning texting while driving on the federal level. The Avoiding Life-Endangering and Reckless Texting by Drivers Act—also known as the ALERT Drivers Act—would penalize states that chose not to pass texting-while-driving bans. States without bans in place stand to lose up to 25 percent of their federal highway funds each year—potentially, hundreds of millions of dollars—until they outlaw texting while driving. (The threat of withholding federal funds has been used before: In 1984, a similar federal law successfully pressured all 50 states into raising their minimum drinking age to 21.) As of September 2010, however, the progress of the ALERT Drivers Act has stalled; observers say it is unlikely to pass during the 111th Congress, which ends in early January 2011.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has tried to bring more attention to the issue of texting while driving. In October 2009, he organized a two-day conference highlighting the dangers of distracted driving. More than 300 people—transportation experts, researchers, law-enforcement officials, legislators and family members of people killed by drivers using their cell phones to talk or text—gathered in Washington, D.C., for the conference, which LaHood described as "probably the most important meeting in the history of the Department of Transportation." Indeed, LaHood has made distracted driving the primary focus of his tenure as Transportation Secretary. "I'm on a rampage about this, and I'm not going to let up," LaHood said.

At the conference, LaHood announced that President Obama had signed an executive order banning federal employees from texting while using government-issued cell phones or driving government-provided cars. Several months later, in January 2010, the federal government enacted a law prohibiting commercial truck and bus drivers from texting while behind the wheel; violators face fines of up to $2,750. LaHood said that the federal government was not finished with restricting texting while driving. "This is an important step," he said, "and we will be taking more to eliminate the threat of distracted driving."

Supporters of the texting-while-driving bans argue that the act is so obviously dangerous—and so obviously preventable—that it is impossible to justify keeping such an activity legal. "There is no equivalent to texting," Maggie McIntosh, a Democratic member of the Maryland House of Delegates, told the New York Times. "You absolutely must take your eyes off the road and your hand off the wheel, if not both hands, to do it. It absolutely is an action that should not take place in the car while it is moving." Studies suggest that texting drivers run the same risk of crashing their cars as drunk drivers, and no one would ever propose that drunk driving should be legal, supporters contend. Lawmakers must work to ban the clearly dangerous act of texting while driving, proponents argue.

The U.S. public overwhelmingly recognizes the fact that texting while driving is uniquely dangerous and should be banned, proponents say. An October 2009 CBS/New York Times poll found that 97 percent of Americans believe that sending text messages while driving should be illegal, compared with just one percent of Americans who think it should be allowed. The same poll found that half of all Americans think the punishment for texting while driving should be "about the same" as the punishment for drunk driving. Advocates argue that the American public quite rationally recognizes the dangers of texting while driving, and wants the practice to be legally banned.

One of the reasons texting while driving is so perilous is that the human mind simply was not meant to multitask to that degree, proponents of bans maintain. Even experienced drivers expend a huge amount of mental energy on the task of driving; humans simply lack the brainpower to text and drive well at the same time, supporters say. The performance of one of those tasks is likely to suffer, they note—and when the task that suffers is driving, the consequences can be deadly. People who text or talk on the phone while driving "will actually miss a lot of things that are in their visual periphery," David Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, told National Public Radio (NPR). Unless lawmakers want American roads to be populated by drivers wearing virtual blinders, they should work to pass tough texting-while-driving bans, supporters argue.

Many opponents of texting-while-driving bans say that the laws are great in theory, but in practice are so difficult for police officers to enforce that they are rendered practically useless. It is essentially impossible to determine whether a driver is sending a text message, changing the radio station, looking at the car's dashboard clock or just simply glancing down for no particular reason, critics note. In September 2010, the Washington Post reported that police officers in Fairfax County, Virginia, had issued just 16 tickets for texting while driving all year, precisely because the law was so difficult to enforce. "The enforcement problem [with texting-while-driving laws] is enormous," Russ Rader of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, referring to a federal law prohibiting truck and bus drivers from texting, told the Washington Post. "It's not clear that this is going to make any difference on the road in terms of crashes." 

Indeed, even if a police officer does pull over a driver for suspected texting, it is virtually impossible for the officer to prove that texting occurred, opponents argue. Drunk drivers prove their guilt by submitting to and failing a Breathalyzer test, but no such test exists to prove that a motorist was texting while behind the wheel, critics note. Some proponents have suggested that police officers be given the right to seize cell phones from suspected violators, but critics say that such seizures are wholly unwarranted. "The police have no business going into my phone," John Wesley Hall, former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told the New York Times.

Few critics actually make the case that texting while driving is a good idea; in fact, most acknowledge that taking one's eyes off the road to read or send a text message while driving is obviously a stupid thing to do. However, opponents maintain that one could say the same thing about any type of distraction—applying makeup, consulting a map or global positioning system (GPS) device for directions or attending to rambunctious children. Indeed, anything in a car can be perceived as a distraction, critics argue. While casting his vote against a texting-while-driving ban in Arizona in March 2010, state Senator Ron Gould (R) told the Arizona Daily Sun that fishing for the last ice cube in a fountain soft drink could cause a driver to lose focus, but "we don't have special legislation to outlaw Big Gulps." Texting-while-driving bans are so arbitrary that they defy comprehension, opponents contend.

Many critics point to studies that seem to indicate that bans on texting while driving have simply not been effective. For example, a January 2010 study by the Highway Loss Data Institute, a nonprofit research organization that provides data to the automobile insurance industry, found that bans on handheld cell phones have not reduced crash rates in any of the three states they surveyed (New York, California and Connecticut). A different study, conducted by the American Automobile Association (AAA) and published in September 2010, found that Californians actually text more frequently while driving than they did before that state's ban was enacted. And nationally, the frequency of deadly car crashes has declined even while the use of cell phones has grown: In 1995, there were 1.72 deaths for every 100 million miles traveled, but by 2007, there were only 1.36 deaths, a decline of 21%. "[I]t's hard to find definitive empirical support for the idea that our highways are awash in BlackBerry-spilled blood," writes Radley Balko of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.

Indeed, critics say that the laws are not only ineffective and arbitrary, but also redundant in many cases. Eight states have banned the use of handheld communications devices while driving, yet each of those states has since banned texting while driving—which is pointless, critics argue, since it is impossible to text if you cannot legally hold a cell phone while driving. Many critics argue that, by passing redundant texting-while-driving laws, state legislators are cynically pandering to their constituents. "These laws aren't about safety," writes Balko. "They're about symbolism."

Many opponents of texting-while-driving bans are, in fact, libertarians who argue that such laws encroach upon their freedom as Americans. They warn of a burgeoning "nanny state" in the U.S., in which every conceivable bad behavior is legislated against with little regard for whether the laws actually make sense. Just because an activity is stupid, and even potentially dangerous, does not mean that lawmakers should bend over backward to outlaw it, opponents say. "You cannot legislate responsibility," Washington State Senator Don Benton (R) told the Seattle Times. "Citizens need to be responsible for themselves."

Some predict that some or all of the 20 states that do not have texting-while-driving laws as of September 2010 will adopt bans within the next few years. However, some experts are wondering if such laws adequately address the issue of distracted driving. They note that many of the risks involved in texting while driving are also present in the mere act of speaking on the phone while driving, as studies have proven time and again that cell phone use of any kind greatly increases the likelihood that drivers will get into car accidents. Banning texting "makes people feel good and makes it look like you're doing something, but you're not tackling the more difficult problem" of distracted driving, David Strayer, University of Utah professor, told the New York Times. "It misses the larger point."

Those experts say that drivers who use cell phones will continue to get into serious—and potentially deadly—crashes, because simply talking on the phone is distracting enough. Some have even suggested the idea of banning cell phone use completely for all motorists, under any circumstances. Indeed, the National Safety Council has already called for a total cell phone ban, and some observers have speculated that Transportation Secretary LaHood is laying the groundwork for a full ban on cell phone use while driving. Until that day comes, researchers say, texting-while-driving laws will remain at best a partial solution to the problem of distracted driving.

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