Some 94 percent of all drivers have fully acknowledged the dangers of sending text messages while behind the wheel, according to a nationally representative telephone survey by the AAA Foundation. However, more than half still continue to do so, despite the potential repercussions that they know may very well follow.

Starting today, Iowa has joined 27 other states (plus the District of Columbia and Guam) in making this practice banned for all drivers.

But, guess what happens if you’re caught? One might think you would potentially lose your driving privileges. Or maybe even your license — because texting while driving is more dangerous than drunk driving, according to a 2009 study from Car and Driver magazine. At the very least, you can expect a fine, right? Well, think again.

Here’s what you get for the next year: a big, fat warning.

The second year? Nothing — unless of course an officer has a primary reason to pull you over first, such as speeding, illegal lane changing, running a red light, etc. And even then, the driver faces a basic fine of $30 ($50 for teens). And, with the cost of court fees and all those added bonuses, you could be shelling out up to $100, according to Jessica Lown of the Iowa Department of Public Safety.

While the DI Editorial Board is hopeful that this long overdue ban will be just the ticket to refrain drivers from whipping out their cell phones at any given moment, we still feel the ban will be hard to enforce.

We strongly question whether this law will be overly effective, especially when in the first year drivers are merely given a slap on the wrist. We mean, if your mother consistently tells you she better not catch you out past curfew again but ceases from ever grounding you, will you actually listen? Probably not.

Teens need more serious repercussions.

“I would hope people driving would put safety as their primary responsibility,” Iowa City police Sgt. Denise Brotherton said.

And so would we. But, let’s be frank — some of us still don’t wear our seat belts, and we know the dangers (and fines) for breaking that law.

Dan McGehee, the director of Human Factors and Vehicle Safety Research Division at the UI Public Policy Center, who has researched driver behavior and performance — and more particularly distracted and teen driving — said, “The general public thinks texting is a youth issue.”

And we couldn’t agree more — teens love to text, so much so that texting has surpassed the number of calls teens make, according to the June 2009 Nielsen Report on How Teens Use Media, which reported an average teen sends or receives 2,899 text-messages per month compared with 191 calls.

Fortunately, all 16- to 18-year-olds face a ban on cell phone and electronic-entertainment devices an (yes, this includes iPods), whereas adults will only be prohibited from texting.

Despite our adamant attitude toward this new ban, we still have our doubts. The state wants to ban texting because it is a distraction, but aren’t there a plethora of distractions on the road?

McGehee expects that this won’t be a problem, and he said all the research done at UI points to this being a significant issue and very different from other types of distraction.

Yes, of course there are other distractions, such as eating a cheeseburger, he said, but you have to look at how frequently we do these kinds of activities.

How often you perform that distracting activity is really the issue, not how distracting it may be, McGehee said.

While it definitely won’t be easy for UI students to quit cold turkey, we are hopeful that over time they will understand the repercussions of their actions and follow through on this newly implemented ban to see the positive results we are hoping for.