Stephenville has banned text messaging and use of handheld cell phones while driving. The City Council considered a plan to ban all cell phone use by motorists, but rejected it during the April 6 voting. Fines will be up to $200.
El Paso prohibits texting and talking on a cell phone while driving in city limits. The City Council approved the ban on March 9 and it went into effect May 1. Hands-free cell phones OK. Fines up to $500. El Paso already outlawed use of handheld cell phones in school zones.
Galveston has banned text messaging while driving within city limits. Fines up to $500. The City Council voted to outlaw texting for motorists on Jan. 14 and the ban went into effect immediately.
Arlington%u2019s City Council refused to consider a ban on text messaging while driving.
Statistics show that driving while distracted has a higher percentage of fatalities compared to drunken drivers. A Virginia Tech study illustrates the distance required to stop while driving 35 mph and texting on a phone compared to a drunk driver stopping. A drunk driver travels an average of four feet more before stopping and the texting driver travels 25 more feet before stopping. The study also goes on to show that drunk driving increases the likelihood of causing a car crash by four times. A texting driver increases the likelihood of causing a crash by eight times.
Please join me in asking the City of Arlington to PLEASE help me and all of AISD’s bus drivers protect the children of Arlington, help us keep them SAFE by making the use of a hand held device against the law while in city limits.
Tell Arlington, TX to make txting and driving against the law!
Burmese police announced this week that out of the hundreds of human traffickers they have arrested over the past several years, at least 100 of them were once victims. Sadly, trafficking victims becoming traffickers is not unusual. But what makes a person go from victim to trafficker?
Most of the 100 victims-turned-traffickers were trafficked from Burma into China and Thailand for forced labor, forced prostitution, or forced marriage. Once discovered, they were shipped back to Burma, sometimes deported, and usually with no compensation. Back in Burma, there were no support services for them, no money for counseling or job training, no help with medical bills or education. The lack of support for victims traps them in a vicious cycle. Some people end up trafficked again and again because they cannot break out of that cycle. Others eventually break the cycle, by becoming traffickers themselves.
Victims can turn into traffickers for a number of reasons. For those trafficked as children, there may be no other conceivable industry for them to enter other than the one they were sold into as a child, whether that’s commercial sex, brick making, or domestic service. So as an adult, they follow the only career path they’ve known and recruit other children into the same industry. Others many find that the only model of power in their life is the person who owns and controls them — their trafficker. When they look around for ways to empower themselves, becoming a subjugater of others is all they see. Still others, as is the case with many of the 100 Burmese nationals, may not even realize what they’re engaging in is against the law. They know the trafficking routes, brokers, and bosses from the time they were forced to work. That they should recruit others to do the same thing might feel like the natural extension of their previous “job.”
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Burmese police announced this week that out of the hundreds of human traffickers they have arrested over the past several years, at least 100 of them were once victims. Sadly, trafficking victims becoming traffickers is not unusual. But what makes a person go from victim to trafficker?
Most of the 100 victims-turned-traffickers were trafficked from Burma into China and Thailand for forced labor, forced prostitution, or forced marriage. Once discovered, they were shipped back to Burma, sometimes deported, and usually with no compensation. Back in Burma, there were no support services for them, no money for counseling or job training, no help with medical bills or education. The lack of support for victims traps them in a vicious cycle. Some people end up trafficked again and again because they cannot break out of that cycle. Others eventually break the cycle, by becoming traffickers themselves.
Victims can turn into traffickers for a number of reasons. For those trafficked as children, there may be no other conceivable industry for them to enter other than the one they were sold into as a child, whether that’s commercial sex, brick making, or domestic service. So as an adult, they follow the only career path they’ve known and recruit other children into the same industry. Others many find that the only model of power in their life is the person who owns and controls them — their trafficker. When they look around for ways to empower themselves, becoming a subjugater of others is all they see. Still others, as is the case with many of the 100 Burmese nationals, may not even realize what they’re engaging in is against the law. They know the trafficking routes, brokers, and bosses from the time they were forced to work. That they should recruit others to do the same thing might feel like the natural extension of their previous “job.”
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