Page 187 - SpringBoard_ELA_Grade8_Flipbook

aCTIvITy 2.16
continued
Gathering and Citing evidence
About the Author
Matthew Walberg is an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune, specializing in criminal justice and a wide range of governmental topics.
article
ordinance: statute; law
conclusive: definitive; clear consensus: general agreement
prohibition: the action of forbidding something, especially by law
my Notes
Cellphones and driving:
A s a g en o
d n r us
as we thi k?
Grammar USaGe
Passive Voice
Note how the passive
voice is used in the second sentence of the first paragraph. Why is it used in this case?
Despite calls for cellphone bans, there’s no conclusive data on handheld devices and safe driving
March 26, 2012 | By Matthew Walberg, Chicago Tribune reporter
Source: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-03-26/news/ct-met-cellphone-safety- studies-20120326_1_handheld-cellphones-cellphone-restrictionscellphone-subscribers
1 A bill pending in Springfield would ban all drivers in Illinois from using handheld cellphones in Illinois. An ordinance being considered in Evanston would go further and prohibit motorists in that town from talking on cellphones of any kind—including hands-free.
2 It’s a matter of safety, proponents of both measures say.
3 But two decades of research done in the U.S. and abroad have not yielded conclusive
data about the impact cellphones have on driving safety, it appears. Nor is there a consensus that hands-free devices make for safer driving than handheld cellphones.
4 In theory, the effect of cellphones on driver performance should be relatively easy to determine: Compare crash data against phone records of drivers involved
in accidents. But phone records are not easily obtained in the United States, forcing researchers in this country to find less direct ways to analyze the danger of cellphone distraction. The issue is further clouded because auto accidents overall have been decreasing, even as cellphones become more common.
5 “The expectation would be that as cellphone use has skyrocketed we would see a correlation in the number of accidents, but that hasn’t happened,” said Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association.
6 Adkins said the association believes that states should simply enforce their current cellphone laws, if any, and wait for further research to better understand exactly how much of a role cellphone use plays in automobile accidents.
7 “We know it’s distracting, we know it increases the likelihood of a crash,” Adkins said. “It just hasn’t shown up in data in a lot of cases—in other words, it’s hard to prove that a crash was caused because someone was on their cellphone.”
8 Proponents of cellphone restrictions—whether total bans or prohibition of handheld phones—can cite some studies to back up their positions.
9 A 2005 study published in the British Medical Journal looked at crash data for 456 cellphone subscribers in Perth, Australia, who had an auto accident that required medical attention. The study, which essentially confirmed a similar 1997 study
Word CoNNeCTIoNS
Roots and Affixes
The word correlation is made from the Latin prefix cor-, meaning “together; with” and the root word relation, meaning “connection.”
160 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 8
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