Some months back, a cousin was giving me a ride to the train station and while she was driving, a call came in. Naturally, she picked up her cellphone with one hand while keeping her other hand on the wheel. Yes, she was breaking a traffic offense. I asked her to end the call and not to use the cellphone while she was driving … especially without an ear piece. Her reply was, “you are really getting old.” Yes, I am getting old. I hope I am growing up too.

Now if you think talking on the cellphone without an ear piece is bad enough, people seem to get worse; they are driving while they are texting now. Sad to say, technology is advancing forward and yet we seem to be moving backward.

Are you one of those who uses the cellphone without an ear piece, while you are driving? If you are, probably right now you will be saying, “I can manage the car steering well with one hand and use the cellphone with the other hand.”

Before an accident happened, every driver thought he/she can handle the car with one hand. And some might say, “If I knew, I wouldn’t have use the cellphone without an ear piece, while I was driving.” In a report by CBS News.com, a man who was involved in a collision, because he was texting, killed a 63-year-old grandfather.

“There’s no words to say how sorry I am,” He laments. ” … I think about this car accident every single day of my life. I think everybody thinks it can’t happen to them,” He says, “because I thought the same thing. But obviously, it can.”

From a report in Cnet.com, “A recently released study (PDF) by the VirginiaTech Transportation Institute found that truck drivers who were texting were 23 times more at risk of a ‘crash or near crash event’ than non-distracted driving.”

Further from the study, “Sending a text message took a driver’s eyes off the road for 4.6 seconds over a 6-second interval, which equates to driving the length of a football field at 55 mph without looking at the road.”

So the next time when you are thinking of driving while texting, think again, “is it absolutely necessary for you to send the text? Most probably it will not kill you if you do not send the text message. But 4.6 seconds over a 6-seconds interval definitely increase the chance of killing yourself or other.