Monday, July 03, 2006
Editorial: DUIC: Driving under influence of cellphone
The law should recognize the hazards of this common distraction.
From the RoundTable blog
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So driving while applying makeup or while reading is riskier than driving while talking on a cellphone. D'oh!
If either of the former activities would not cause a policeman to stop and cite a driver for recklessness, state legislatures should rush to pass laws banning those activities while driving.
They should pass cellphone bans, as well.
The fact that some people engage in other stupid, life-endangering behavior in no way reduces the danger cellphones pose when drivers are distracted because they are yakking when they should be braking. Or speeding up. Or making any of the countless, moment-to-moment decisions drivers need to make to safely negotiate traffic changes around them.
A new study, published last week by researchers at the University of Utah, suggests that talking on cellphones while driving might be just as dangerous as drinking and driving.
Sounds right. Phone users are easy to spot on the road. Alert drivers recognize delayed reactions or weaving as warning signs that they are sharing the road with an impaired -- possibly drunken -- driver. More and more, a closer look reveals drivers are on their phones.
Yet the multitaskers of the road will insist cellphone use does not affect their own driving, just the driving of other people, obviously less skilled than they. Simple observation suggests a lot of them are fooling themselves.
Whenever a new study finds a link between accidents and cellphone use, some representative of the cellular industry is sure to bring up all the other dangerous distractions drivers engage in on the road. Indeed, a study released earlier this year by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found eating, reading, applying makeup all to be hazardous. But cellphones were the most common distraction.
No one argues that drivers ought to be able to prop "War and Peace" against the steering wheel and read while zooming down the interstate. Cellphone users insist they are doing nothing wrong.
They pose a serious hazard, and state laws should acknowledge it.
