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AT&T Says 'No' to Texting While Driving


Wireless Week reports:

AT&T today announced a campaign aimed at curtailing the unsafe practice of texting while driving. The carrier hopes to raise awareness about the risks of texting and driving and remind all wireless consumers, especially youth, that text messages can, and should, wait until after driving.



Thus AT&T is breaking with the CTIA crowd and taking a more aggressive stand on the issue. CTIA’s position remains

The wireless industry is neutral on outright bans of cellular use while driving and hands-free legislation. We believe consumers can best determine what laws (bans or hands-free) that they would or would not support related to talking on their devices. At the same time, we believe text-messaging while driving is incompatible with safe driving, and we support state and local statutes that ban this activity while driving.


T-Mobile’s “driving tips” include nothing about texting. The only thing on the subject I could find on Sprint was a link to the horrific YouTube U.K. public service announcement shown below - a bloody example of what texting can result in. This PSA is so horrific that YouTube restricts to viewers over 18 - so it probably has limited impact on users. I could find nothing on VZW’s website on texting and driving.

However, if these firms provide me with links, I would be glad to revise this.

So congratulations to AT&T for making the decision to break from its more conservative competitors and push the safety issue here.




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