A New York Criminal Defense Blog:  U.S. “Representative Carolyn McCarthy [D, NY] has proposed a new law to outlaw texting while driving. Called the Avoiding Life-Endangering and Reckless Texting by Drivers Act, awkward but necessary to come up with the really cool acronym ALERT, She argues for her law in US News & World Reports, While laying the emotional argument on thick, and beating the daylights out of the obvious, she does present some of the empirical support for the proposition that texting while driving is an awfully dangerous thing to do.”

It is hard to dispute the realities of distracted driving. In a study published this summer, Virginia Tech University found that drivers are 23 times as likely to get into an accident while texting. Another study, published by Car and Driver magazine in June, concluded that texting while driving can be more dangerous than drunk driving. Other studies of distracted driving have yielded similar results.