Lyndon Johnson once said of Gerald Ford that he was so dumb he
couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time — or words to that
effect. Well, most of us are at least a bit smarter than that —
but that doesn’t mean we can talk on the phone and still give full
time and attention to driving. The task is simply not possible, yet
more and more of us insist on being glued to a cell phone while
we’re in our vehicles — one hand on the wheel, half our brain
diverted by some almost always non-essential gabbling.
The consequences are not pretty.
• In mid-January 2004, a five-year-old girl was killed and
more than a dozen other children injured when a trucker —
“fumbling for his cell phone,” according to state police — lost
control of his semi and hit a stopped school bus in North
Carolina.
• The California Highway Patrol (CHP) attributed 4,699
accidents, 2,786 injuries and 31 deaths resulting from those wrecks
to distracted driving caused by people yakking on their phones.
(This was for a nine-month period in 2001; the CHP estimates the
total for the full year to be closer to 6,000 crashes.)
• The Harvard University Center for Risk Analysis
estimates that there are as many as 1.5 million crashes annually in
the United States — leading to 560,000 injuries and 2,600 deaths
— “due to phone use in moving vehicles.”
And the problem is not restricted to portable/hand-held phones
— which have been banned on safety grounds in some states and the
District of Columbia. As University of Rhode Island Professor
Manbir Sodhi put it, “Holding the phones isn’t the main issue.
Thinking is.”
Sodhi conducted a study of the effects of talking on a cell
phone — including the hands-free type that have become popular
options on many new cars — and found that people having
conversations in a moving vehicle often suffer from “tunnel vision”
and don’t notice what’s going on around them as well as drivers who
are paying attention to the road exclusively. The American
Automobile Association’s Foundation for Traffic Safety conducted a
similar study, with similar results.
BUT IT SHOULDN’T EVEN BE NECESSARY to rely on studies. It’s common
sense that a person involved in an animated conversation —
especially on a cell phone, where reception is often spotty and
it’s frequently difficult to understand what the other party is
saying — is less alert than he would otherwise be. Such a driver
is less apt to notice changing traffic conditions, merging cars or
developing situations that could require him to execute an
avoidance maneuver or stop suddenly. The driving environment
changes constantly; even a moment’s inadvertence can have
metal-crunching consequences. The old diving school mantra of
Identify, Predict, Decide, Execute (IPDE) is much complicated when
a driver’s attention is diverted and his mind preoccupied with
things unrelated to what’s going on around him.
And having a phone conversation is qualitatively different from
talking with a passenger in the car because the person on the other
end of the phone has no way of knowing when to adjust the
conversation to allow the driver to cope with moment-to-moment
changes in road conditions and traffic. A passenger can see that
merging car up ahead and stop talking for a moment to give the
driver time to focus and adjust his course — while the person on
the other end of the cell phone will keep right on talking, often
confusing or distracting the driver just enough to cause an
accident.
Many of us (probably all of us) have encountered drivers
embroiled in animated conversation on their cell phones —
oftentimes too addled to notice they’re drifting into the next lane
— or that the light has turned green. It runs the gamut from
annoying and discourteous to incredibly irresponsible and dangerous
(see above).
Just ten or 15 years ago, the irritating little contraptions
were a novelty of the rich — and the self-important; now every
minivan-driving hausfrau, teenage Britney Spears wannabe, college
kid and shoe salesman has one glued to his or her ear seemingly at
all times. And the corker is that most of these calls are mostly of
the “So, what’s up dude?” variety — the fate of empires and
nations is not at issue. Legitimate emergency situations that would
justify the use of cell phones while driving — to report an
accident, inform the police of a robbery in progress, etc. —
probably account for fewer than five percent of all cell phone
calls made in cars. Yet despite the absence of necessity that might
trump safety considerations — and notwithstanding the clear and
abundant evidence that cell phone usage behind the wheel results in
accident and death rates comparable to drunk driving (and is
manifestly more of a threat to other drivers than not being
buckled-up for safety) — there’s no crusade by “Mothers Against
Cell Phones,” no rolling juggernaut to force people to hang up and
drive.
According to the wireless industry, there are now more than 90
million cell phones in circulation — up from 345,000 in 1985.
Their invasiveness — and the danger they create — will not recede
anytime soon. Within five years, all but a few latter-day Luddites
who refuse to be “plugged in” will remain cell-free.
But they’ll be easy enough to spot.
Look for the cars that actually move as soon as the light turns
green.
