What Moves America? Some Transportation Trends in the US

22 January 2012

Streetcars along Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisian

FAITH LAPIDUS: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Faith Lapidus.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: And I'm Christopher Cruise. This week on our program, we look at transportation in the United States.

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FAITH LAPIDUS: A federal safety agency wants to send a message to all drivers in the United States: keep your attention on the road. The National Transportation Safety Board has called for a nationwide ban on the use of portable electronic devices while driving. The proposal by the NTSB would not ban emergency uses or the use of what it calls "devices designed to support the driving task."

Across the country, different states have different levels of restrictions on texting or talking on the phone while driving.

The safety board called for the nationwide ban last month after meeting to discuss a deadly accident. It happened in two thousand ten in Missouri. A pickup truck drove into the back of a bigger truck that had slowed for road work. A school bus then struck the pickup truck, and a second school bus crashed into the first one.

Thirty-eight people were injured, but a fifteen-year-old student was killed. So was the nineteen-year-old driver of the pickup truck. NTSB investigators found that he had sent and received eleven text messages in the eleven minutes before the accident. He had received the last text right before the crash.