Do you think it poses an unsafe risk to eat fast food, use a map light to consult a map, or use a visor mirror while driving?

Recently a 49-year-old California woman was sentenced to 6 years in prison because she was texting while driving, missed a sign warning of roadwork ahead, and plowed into some stopped traffic killing a woman. This was in August of 2007, a year before the first UK laboratory study showing slowed reaction times due to texting, and a year and a half before there was any law against it.

It turns out that about 20% of drivers on the road text and drive, resulting in about 2,000 deaths annually, out of 38,000 total. That works out to odds of a fatal mishap on any given text message of about 1 in 14.3 million, or about the same as winning the California lottery.

I am having an argument with some folks in another forum and I need a reality check to get a sense of what other people think about taking very small but avoidable risks. My position is that this woman, given what she knew at the time, had no reason to suppose that she would cause anyone any harm. The position of the other folks comes down to a common sense dictum that ANY attention diverted away from the task of driving is unsafe, and she deserves to be punished to the max for taking that risk (even though current law only punishes texting while driving with a $25 fine).

In my view, as regrettable as the mishap was, the woman was no more careless than anyone who eats fast food, uses a map light, changes CDs, attends to a fussy child, or any other thing like that.