Obama bans "texting while driving" for 4.5M govt workers

October 2nd, 2009

Nothing makes you a supporter of a ban on “texting while driving” like your body coming into contact with a vehicle driven by some moron fiddling with a cell phone. (Several Ars staffers have had that unpleasant experience firsthand.) President Obama doesn’t want any of those morons to be federal employees—as of Thursday, all government employees are banned from texting while driving whenever they are on the job, driving a federal vehicle, or using a government-supplied cell phone.

The executive order affects nearly 4.5 million employees across the US, including postal workers and military personnel. The only situations in which federal workers might be able to get away with texting while driving is if they are not working, they are driving their own vehicle, and they are using their own phone; and that’s assuming their particular state doesn’t already ban texting and driving.