Four states ban drivers from making cell phone calls whilst underway (California, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York). Sixteen states ban beginning drivers from phoning from cars. In May 1999, the Oklahoma legislature rejected a bill mandating a blanket ban. The Journal Record reports state Rep. Paul Wesselhoft is shifting focus, proposing a mandatory fine of $1,000 and 20 days in jail for using a cell phone if it's determined to be a factor in an accident. Previously, Wesselhoft tried (and failed) to get OK to restrict drivers to hands-free devices. "I would much rather be on the preventative side of the issue. Unfortunately, we [now] have to punish them." Wesselhoft cited a NHTSA study revealing that drivers looked at the road less than 40 percent of the time while dialing a cell phone. He also pointed to statistics from the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office citing cell phones as a contributing factor in 802 accidents in 2006. Why can't we all just hang up and drive?
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Even hands-free calls have been proven to be as distracting as calls using handsets, and should be banned as well.
Unfortunately, as long as we’ll live in a car-dominated society where people don’t enjoy the driving, distractions will exist.
Talking on a cellphone is definitely one of the worst, though, while being widespread, and therefore forgiven.
NJ does not enforce its cellphone laws, I see people using them all the time, including right in front of cops who could not care less about it.
In Connecticut if drivers use hands-free devices with their cells, they’re okay.
If caught not using a hands-free device, it’s a potential $100 fine.
The “must use a hands-free device” law is not strictly enforced and is widely ignored here in the Constitution State.
Either way, I’d agree cells are distracting:
Drive. Make a phone call. Choose one.
In an e-mail exchange on the subject, a friend here in CT sent this to me:
“A couple months ago I was stopped at a traffic light.
Just behind me was a woman talking on her cell phone.
Just behind her was a local cop. He saw her, turned on his bull-horn and said “You’d probably be wise to stop talking on the phone with a cop sitting behind you.”
Too bad that’s about the most severe punishment that’s going to be meted out for this offense.”
Too bad indeed.
An outright ban is overkill.A partial ban is hard to enforce.
Common sense should be the solution.
I don’t see a problem with a buisness guy,or a soccer mom for that matter,conducting his/her life while stuck in traffic.
The driver has to think,number one priority is driving the vehicle. The phone is secondary.Nobody has been killed or maimed by a dropped phone call.
Some drivers are better than others.On a busy shipping/and recieving dock at GM.I have actually witnessed a trucker back up a 53 footer with his right hand on the wheel and his left holding a cell phone to his ear.
I guess it depends on your driving skill.
I
In Switzerland they came up with a novel solution to the problem. If you’re in an accident, and records show that you were on your cell phone, it is your fault, period. Doesn’t matter what the other guy did. Mostly the issue has to do with inattentive driving, which seems to be a “right” of Americans, whether they are on the cell phone, making notes about their day, or noodling off to dream land whilst driving. My experiences in Europe suggest that they take their driving far more seriously than we do.
Phones seem to have become the latest scapegoat in our efforts to blame outside forces instead of drivers for their behavior.
A couple of basic facts:
-Studies based upon actual accident data show that phones are “contributing factors” in fewer than 1% of accidents.
-No place that has enacted a ban or hand-held ban has shown a dramatic decline in accidents thereafter.
In the case of the second point, it really makes no sense for phones to be so allegedly hazardous, yet to see absolutely no benefit after their use has been banned or restricted. If you can’t see any correlation between the two events, then it should be obvious that phones aren’t much of a factor, if at all.
And we don’t seem intent on banning changing CD’s, flipping through radio stations, or outlawing conversation, even if the latter might restore peace to parents across the nation. (“Shut up, kids; mommy doesn’t want you to be sent to jail.”)
Perhaps we need to address why we have car accidents in the first place. I would suggest that aside from those that involve intoxication and occasional bits of purely bad luck, most accidents are the result of poor judgment and an attitude that elevates blaming the other guy above the virtues of defensive driving.
It’s not a lack of technical ability — most people have adequate ability to keep the car pointed in the general direction that it is intended to go — and it isn’t due to our appliances, which are neutral and can be used for good or for bad. Instead, it’s the result of our general expectation that responsibility is the burden of the other driver, and not on ourselves.
I would bet that the people who have accidents while using their phones would have had those accidents, regardless. If it hadn’t been the phone, it would have been something else. A driver who is uninterested in driving defensively does not need a phone to provoke bad behavior.
How is talking on a hands free phone (like my bluetooth parrot kit) that allows hands free dialing any worse than having a conversation with passengers in the car? Should we also ban talking to your passengers? How about listening to the radio (or changing the station)?
I agree that holding a phone to your ear (or texting) is just stupid; but hands-free phone conversations are no different than conversing with passengers in the car.
I have a list of other things that should be banned, if you want to eliminate ALL distractions:
food
drinks
computers
books
newspapers
music and radios
makeup
crossword, word search, and other puzzles
company reports
cigarettes, cigars, pipes, etc…
animals
adult magazines
video playback
games
passengers (especially children)
mirrors in the visors
That’s a start. I think people can be distracted by all of the above items to the same extent (if not greater) as a cell phone.
I think we can get ridiculous with this. People just need to use their heads; if they can’t drive and talk, then don’t. Some people can, others can’t and that’s the way it is.
How is it that truck drivers used CB radios with handheld mikes for decades without similar problems? Is it just that they have generally passed driving tests that actually require them to know how to drive?
How is talking on a hands free phone (like my bluetooth parrot kit) that allows hands free dialing any worse than having a conversation with passengers in the car? Should we also ban talking to your passengers? How about listening to the radio (or changing the station)?
There have been a number of psychological studied done (If you want, I’ll find you links to the papers), where the basic conclusion is that if you’re talking to someone in the car they have extra information (your facial expressions, view of the traffic, etc) that means you don’t have to work as hard (mentally) to converse with them, and if they see the traffic get hard to deal with, they just expect you to stop talking and drive. But on the phone, they don’t know what you see, so you’re (subconsciously) more likely to devote more attention to the phone (even hands free) conversation than you would talking to someone in the car.
I can tell my explanation isn’t very good, but my wife is a cognitive psychologist and she’s told me all about these studies. I just can’t describe them well.
How is it that truck drivers used CB radios with handheld mikes for decades without similar problems? Is it just that they have generally passed driving tests that actually require them to know how to drive?
My guess is that a CB is a half-duplex conversation (you either talk or listen, not both), whereas the phone is full-duplex (you can talk and listen at the same time). So the nature of a CB is that you say something and then wait several seconds for a reply and then you reply seconds later. On a phone, the latency is much much shorter, less than 100ms, so your brain never gets back to devoting work to driving, it’s giving all of it’s timeslices to the phone call.
I view it sort of like communicating with someone over email versus IM. I hate IM because it’s like they’re always expecting a reply immediately (like a phone call), with email I can wait until I’m ready to reply, and that’s totally acceptable (like a CB).
“Common sense should be the solution.”
UInfortunately, this is becoming increasingly rare in Suburban NJ.
I just can’t wait for computer-controlled cars…
As soon as you take a phone call ,the computer takes over the driving.
zerofoo: as miked said, it is definitely different than carrying on a conversation with others in the car.
My public insurance company, ICBC, conducted a study in 2001 that provided some pretty solid evidence. Here is a link that refers to the study with some summarized results: (I hope this works. If not, google: icbc study hands-free cell)
http://www.safetyonline.com/content/news/article.asp?DocID=%7B11562724-F3BE-11D4-A770-00D0B7694F32%7D&Bucket=&Featured=&VNETCOOKIE=NO
The summary isn’t correct with respect to California and phones. California has proposed a ban on hand-held phone talking, but the ban won’t go into effect until 2008. Further, I don’t think there is any ban on dialing, just a ban on holding it to your ear!
If anything, these law is going to just encourage distracted driving, since there will be a cell-phone law and people will be following it. Plus, with the hands-free phone, people will now be able to perform a second distracting activity while talking: eating, drinking, makeup, shaving, etc.
There have been a number of psychological studied done (If you want, I’ll find you links to the papers), where the basic conclusion is that if you’re talking to someone in the car they have extra information (your facial expressions, view of the traffic, etc) that means you don’t have to work as hard (mentally) to converse with them, and if they see the traffic get hard to deal with, they just expect you to stop talking and drive.
All of these studies are theoretical studies, largely based upon assumptions that are loaded toward reaching a given conclusion.
The studies that examine actual real-world accident events don’t show phones to be a particular problem. Again, phones are a contributing factor in a low percentage of accidents, and there is no documented instance of the enactment of a law being followed by a decline in collisions or fatalities.
If phones were as problematic as some would claim, accident rates should have begun leaping and bounding upward within the last several years as usage and market penetration of mobile phones have increased. But in fact, we have seen the exact opposite, with a continued slow and steady decline in accident rates, as has been the general pattern over the last several decades.
The real-world data just doesn’t correlate with the theoretical studies, even though it should. Since reality is what it is, this tells you that the theoretical studies are flawed. All such studies are built on a set of assumptions, and based upon these contradictions with reality, it’s fair to conclude that the assumptions must be erroneous.
If one does not possess the cognitive ability to drive and talk on a cell phone at the same time, then suicide may just be their best lifestyle choice.
America is fast becoming a society of wusses/nannies. Seriously.
you forgot DC – its illegal to talk on a cell phone and drive there as well
If one does not possess the cognitive ability to drive and talk on a cell phone at the same time, then suicide may just be their best lifestyle choice.
I can’t drive (well) and talk on the phone at the same time. I hate it when I get a call when I’m driving. Usually, I just ignore the call, but if it’s one that I can’t ignore, I try to get off the phone as quickly as possible, I really notice my situational awareness drop considerably when I’m on the phone. Maybe it’s different with an automatic and you need 1 fewer foot and 1 fewer arm to drive, but I feel like I’m much more dangerous when I’m on the phone.
Make all automatic transmissions illegal.