Many of us in Ohio are guilty of it — texting while driving. Not only is it generally unnecessary, it's dangerous. Texting while driving can lead to catastrophic injury to not only the driver but to passengers, other drivers and pedestrians alike resulting from an auto accident.

One scientist is quoted regarding the matter as saying, "I have two daughters, and at the time they were teenagers, and, of course, they lived on their cell phones. I wondered if there was something that I could do to address the problem."

The scientist and father decided that he wanted to see if there was a pattern in the manner people texted while distractedly driving. He found that the chaotic method with which people text while driving is much like tracking the footsteps of an adult walking (for a non-distracted driver), and then an adult walking while holding the hands of a toddler learning to walk (distracted driver) — disjointed and all over the place.

Remarkably, the scientist and his team created a mathematical equation to track this habit that is 99 percent accurate. With this information developers can create a cell phone application that will alert the driver to when they are distracted and should be focusing on the road.

The best attempt prior to this was the use of global positioning systems to track the speed of the phone. But the snag with that is it would alert passengers as well, rather than just the distracted driver.

Hopefully, with the successful development and implementation of this application distracted driving will decrease and additional lives will be saved in Ohio and other states across the nation.

Source: The Columbian, "Physicist finds way to detect texting behind the wheel," Sue Vorenberg, Mar. 21, 2012