The news on Monday was riddled with the echoes of a touchy subject in trucking, the use of onboard communication devices. Congress is pushing a big legislation that would federally ban texting while driving. Congress hasn’t said as of yet but the ATA is fairly sure this would ban units like Qualcomm. I for one think this is a good idea. I have seen numerous drivers over my years drive very unsafely just say get that urgent message on their QualComm. But units such as QualComm are not the big issue of today in the trucking world I don’t think. The drivers that scare me senseless are those drivers who have their laptop mounted up front in their cab and use to chat with friends and family on messengers such as AIM and Yahoo. I have seen for myself over 5 drivers I can recall I passed that had their Laptop on their steering wheel typing away. Distractions in the cab have always been there and have caused a good number of drivers to end up in major wrecks or even kill themselves. Over the years I’ve seen guys/girls have 2-3 dogs on their lap. I for one have had a Laptop and a Sprint Air Card for years and I find it vital to my life on the road but I don’t use it while sailing down the highway. But over all according to the New York Times only 3.1% of trucking accidents are from onboard computers, not a huge number but the government has always looked at fixing the lower percentage before the bigger percentage.