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The official student news site of Athens Drive High School

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Textalyzer device could possibly help combat texting while driving

One in every four car accidents in the U.S. is due to cell phone usage while driving, according to the Huffington Post. However, a new device could help police crack down on this epidemic. A proposed New York bill would allow police officers to use a so-called “textalyzer” device to check whether or not the driver was using their phone at the scene of the accident.

The device gets its name from the breathalyzer, a different device that determines a person’s blood alcohol concentration. It was developed by the Israeli company Cellebrite when the father of a 19-year-old boy, who died from texting-while-driving, approached the company wanting for such a device to exist.

“I think maybe once the textalyzer gets put into action a little bit and people see that it’s being used, then it may reduce texting and driving. If the police are using it, then they’ll stop doing it because they know they’ll get caught,” said Caitlin Cassidy, senior and a teenage driver.

Cellebrite’s product will be able to extract information, like text messages, call logs, etc., from drivers’ cell phones. The device is still in development, but Ben Lieberman, co-founder of Distracted Operators Risk Casualties (DORC) and the father of the 19-year-old boy, lobbied for a bill in New York that would require the drivers of the cars involved in the accident to give their phones to the police for testing with the textalyzer. If they were to refuse, the bill states that their licenses would be revoked and the drivers would receive a $200 fine.

“I think the punishment for texting and driving should depend upon the damage. If there was a crash that resulted in a fatality such as the case with the teacher who was killed last month, then you’re looking at a manslaughter case which could result in imprisonment,” said Leigh Ann Frazier, Civics and Economics and Law and Justice teacher that informed her Civics class about the new device. One of her students includes Cassidy. “If it was a crash that led to property damage then of course you’re looking at a monetary reimbursement and perhaps community service or something of that sort.”

Not everyone is completely on board with the use of this device. Some argue that this device and the corresponding bill would interfere with people’s cell phone privacy.

“It seems like the device may be a bit of an invasion of privacy. However, the benefits outweigh the costs because it’s for safety reasons,” said Matt Wakeford, senior and a member of Frazier’s Civics and Economics class.

According to the Washington Post, police would not have access to the actual content of the messages, the textalyzer simply determines whether or not the phone was used at the time of the accident. The bill, dubbed Evan’s Law for Lieberman’s son, would give police “implied consent” and no phone information is being taken through the technology, thus not violating drivers’ Fourth Amendment rights.

“The information I’ve gathered about the textalyzer is that it would only pull if you were texting, not the content so the metadata device would not invade your privacy,” said Tonya Hinton, AP Psychology and American History I teacher. “But the only problem I saw was that it doesn’t do anything except see if you were texting or not. I would like to know if it would pull other things like if someone was trying to Google something at the time of the accident.”

This device could definitely help determine whether or not a driver was texting-while-driving after the accident has occurred, but Hinton argues that people should be working more on preventative measures.

“UNC Chapel Hill is working on the preventative aspect instead of being on the end of after the fact. In the same way that the DARE program did not work as far as saying ‘drugs are bad’ and ‘don’t do drugs,’ the simulators and such they have at Chapel Hill could actually make a positive impact,” Hinton said.

 

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