What will make drivers stop texting?

This post comes from Des Toups at partner site CarInsurance.com.

Text messaging from behind the wheel is illegal in 39 states.

Yet on Thursday -- the day after a Massachusetts teen was sentenced to a year in jail for a deadly crash prosecutors blamed on texting -- the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a new survey that found more than half of high school seniors had texted while driving in the past month.

(Post continues below video.)

Drivers whose noses are buried in their smartphones clearly have missed the message.

Or have they?

• Thirty-nine states outlaw driver texting, but only 10 states and the District of Columbia ban handheld cellphones, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. 
• Massachusetts provides a criminal penalty for the harm a texting driver inflicts on others through negligence. But six states don't address texting at all: Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Montana, South Carolina and South Dakota.
• Five other states -- Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas -- prohibit texting only for novice drivers, as if it were a skill to be acquired with time and maturity.
• Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio and Virginia ban texting for all drivers but don't allow police to make a stop unless the driver has committed another infraction, such as speeding.
• West Virginia assesses three points against a driver's motor vehicle record after a third offense. Most other states simply let the matter drop with a fine.

A small fine -- or a ruined life

Massachusetts law enforcement has issued more than 1,700 tickets since texting was outlawed in 2010.

The teen driver sentenced there, Aaron Deveau of Haverhill, will spend a year in jail and lose his driver's license for 15 years. He was the second driver convicted under the negligence provision.

But there is a chasm between the penalties faced by drivers who text and hurt someone and drivers who text and are merely ticketed. Drivers who don't injure anyone face a $100 fine, and the offense isn't a moving violation; thus, the driver's insurance rates are unaffected.

State legislatures use driver's licenses as a club to enforce societal norms. You can lose your driving privileges for curfew violations, public intoxication, driving off without paying for gas, graffiti, prostitution or vandalism. In Massachusetts, you can lose your driver's license for failing to pay child support or your state taxes.

But you can't lose it for texting unless you kill someone. Surely there is a middle ground.

Penalizing texting as a moving violation would put points on driver's licenses and contribute toward license suspensions, two sins painfully reflected in car insurance rates -- but far less painful than a year in jail and a lifetime of regret.

A federal carrot-and-stick approach

When Google runs the world, we'll be able to text and drive all we want. (See "Will driverless cars cut your rates 80%?")

Until then, mere disapproval of the practice clearly isn't working. The CDC found not only that one-third of the teenagers it surveyed had texted while driving in the last 30 days, but that high school seniors were more likely to text than juniors -- 58% vs. 43%.

That trend could undo the tremendous strides the CDC reported in improved seat belt use and decreased drunken driving. Just 8% of high schoolers reported they never or rarely wore a seat belt, down from 26% in 1997. The percentage who said they had driven after consuming alcohol fell to 8%, down from 17% in 1997.

The federal government doesn't have the power to ban texting, but it does have the power to withhold highway funds to compel states to pass laws -- a strategy that worked to lower thresholds for intoxicated driving to 0.08% in every state.

• Smart Spending on the go: Get our app for Android or iPhone
  

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Thursday that the Obama administration would provide $2.4 million to fund texting and cellphone crackdown projects in California and Delaware. The National Transportation Safety Board has already called for a complete ban on use of all mobile devices while driving.

"If we could get all 50 states to pass a law, that would send a message," LaHood says. "Me, personally, I'd be for a national ban. I'm going to leave it up to Congress to decide what they want to do."

More from CarInsurance.com and MSN Money:

• Rates in every ZIP code: See how your neighborhood stacks up
• What you need to know about cheap student car insurance
• 3 ways to save the most money on car insurance
• How does your car insurance compare?
• How drunks keep on driving
• Lost art of the turn signal