Sexting which involves people sending explicit pics of themselves to their peers has produced a legal gray area in nations which have tight anti-child pornography regulations, such as the U.S.. Some teens who have texted photographs of themselves, or of their friends or partners, are already charged with distribution of child pornography, although those who have received the photographs have been charged with possession of child pornography; in some cases, the possession charge was put on school administrators who have looked into sexting incidents as well. The photographs involved in sexting are frequently distinct in both nature and motivation from the type of subject matter that anti-child pornography laws were developed to address.  Parents have legal and moral obligations for Parental Monitoring to try to do something regarding the issue.  A popular solution is to use Mobile Spy, or Spyphone programs.

The earliest identified published mention of the term “sexting” was in a 2005 article in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine. It has since been referred to as taking place globally.  It has already been noted in the U.K.,  Australia,  New Zealand,  the U.S.,  and Canada.

A 2009 UK survey of 2,094 teens aged 11 to 18 found that 38% had received an “offensive or distressing” sexual picture by text or email.

Sexting is made possible by developments in technology allowing new types of social interaction. Messages with sexual content are already exchanged over all types of traditional media. Modern technology enables photos and videos, which are intrinsically far more explicit and have higher effect. A social threat with sexting is the fact that material can be very simply and widely propagated, over which the author doesn’t have control.

In 2007, thirty-two Australian young adults from the state of Victoria were prosecuted as a result of  sexting activity.  Child pornography charges were brought against six teenagers in Greensburg, Pennsylvania in January 2009 right after three young girls sent sexually explicit photographs to three male schoolmates.

In 2008, a Virginia assistant principal was faced with possession of child pornography and associated crimes after he had been asked to look into a rumored sexting incident at the high school where he worked. Upon finding a student in possession of a picture on his mobile phone that depicted the torso of a girl wearing only underpants, her arms mostly covering her breasts, the assistant principal showed the image to the principal who told him to preserve the photo on his computer as proof, which he did. The judge later ruled that the photograph did not amount to child pornography because under Virginia law, nudity on it’s own just isn’t sufficient to qualify images as child pornography; the picture has to be “sexually explicit”. Loudoun County Prosecutor James Plowman stands by his initial assessment of the photograph and affirms he would not have pursued the case if the assistant principal had agreed to resign. Instead, the assistant principal got a second mortgage on his house and spent $150,000 in attorneys’ fees to clear his name.

In July 2010, Londonderry High School teacher Melinda Dennehy pled guilty and received a one-year suspended sentence for giving racy images of herself to a fifteen year old student. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, a teenaged boy was indicted on felony obscenity charges for apparently delivering a picture of his genitals to various female classmates. Two southwest Ohio teens were arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a first-degree misdemeanor, for sending or possessing naked photos on their mobile phones of two 15-year-old schoolmates.

Vermont lawmakers introduced a bill in April 2009 to legalize the consensual exchange of graphic pictures in between two people 13 to 18 years of age. Passing along such images to other people would remain a criminal offense.

In New York, Assemblyman Ken Zebrowski (D-Rockland) has presented a bill that will create an affirmative defense in which a minor is charged under child pornography laws should they possess or disseminate a picture of themself; or possess or share the image of another minor (within 4 years of their age) with their permission. The affirmative defense will not be offered when the conduct was done without consent. It also creates an educational outreach program for teens that promotes awareness concerning the perils associated with sexting.

Sexting Is Really A Major Problem Not To Be Laughed Off is a post from: WiredWriter

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) records, the age group with the highest proportion of distracted drivers was the under-20 age group. Sixteen percent of all under-20 drivers involved in a fatal collision were reported to have been distracted while driving. Of these operators associated with lethal crashes who were reportedly distracted, the 30-39 year old group had the largest percentage of cellular phone involvement.  The need to trace mobile usage to reduce distracted driver crashes applies to both parents of adolescents, as well, companies.

On June 15, the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) published a new document, Curbing Distracted Driving 2010 Survey of State Safety Programs, that provides the first comprehensive look at state activities and plans to cope with the escalating issue of distracted driving. The report details quite a few strategies states are implementing.  

Adults are just as likely as teens to have texted while driving and tend to be greatly more likely to have talked on the phone while driving.  Furthermore, 49% of adults say they’ve been passengers in a vehicle when the driver was sending or reading sms on their phone. Overall, 44% of adults suggest they have been passengers of drivers which used the cellular telephone in a fashion that placed themselves or others at an increased risk. Beyond driving, a number of cell-toting pedestrians get so diverted when chatting or texting they have physically bumped into another person or an object.  Using Cell Phone Spy to monitor cellphone usage may well apply to more than simply distracted drivers.

Driver distraction is a considerable and difficult safety issue to deal with.   The purpose of the current study, Driver distraction in commercial vehicle operations, was to address the gap in analysis by examining driver distraction in CMV operations. Naturalistic data collection is a technique used to review driver tendencies and efficiency by installing sensors and video cameras in fleet trucks and providing these vehicles to truck drivers to use as part of their usual revenue-producing deliveries. Using software to monitor Track Cell Phone Location may also have other advantages in discovering mobile phone misuse.  Taken together, these data sets represent 203 CMV drivers, seven trucking fleets, and 16 fleet locations. With regards to information, the data set used involves just about 3 million miles of constantly collected kinematic and video data, and signifies the most comprehensive naturalistic CMV driving set in the world.

Analysis of 1995-1999 Crashworthiness Data System (CDS) data, which includes law enforcement reports of tow-away crashes, attributes 1.5% of accidents to using/dialing a cell phone.  The Role of Driver Distraction in Traffic Crashes authors uncover no distinction in impairment due to hands-free in comparison to hand-held cellular phone use, and that the participants in the two cellphone circumstances were associated with more rear-end collisions and reacted 9% more slowly to vehicles ahead when they began to brake. The mean reaction time difference was 0.07 seconds.

The large scale epidemiological study, Wireless telephones and the risk of road crashes, confirms increased collision probability related to cell phone use, including a 10%-20% increase for injury accidents.

US Department Of Transportation Presents Analysis Regarding Distracted Driving is a post from: WiredWriter