Laws against 'texting and driving' haven't made us any safer.

We've all seen it: alarming, dangerous driving behavior perpetrated while under the influence of cell phones. In response to this threat, many locales (including my home state of Washington) enacted bans on texting-while-driving. Has the menace of distracted drivers been curbed?

According to a USA Today article, traffic accidents have actually gone up in areas where anti-phone laws were enacted. To quote the most interesting part:

"Texting bans haven't reduced crashes at all," says Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, whose research arm studied the effectiveness of the laws.