Mixing Phones and Cars Raises Safety Concerns

Four years ago, when the cellular car phone industry predicted there would be 1.5 million phones on the road by 1990, there was public concern about the effect of fast-lane conversations on road safety.

Today, there are already 2 million car phones. Legislative debates about safety have given way to concern that the phones be competitively priced for mass market access. And the phones come transportable or portable, with hands-free microphones, call waiting, call forwarding, and even fax machines.

This is no phone but a new way of life. “The office of the future,” says Los Angeles businessman Mike Blackman, “will be a van or panel truck with a phone and a fax and a box of samples.”

Mostly Business Users

Business users are 85% of today’s market, says Bob Maher, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Assn. in Washington. Many businessmen--contractors, salespeople, real estate agents, locksmiths, repairmen--spend much of the day in their cars making site calls. Others, says Justin Jachke, PacTel Cellular’s vice president of corporate development, are “people who value time highly--CEOs, company chairmen, small-business owners.”

Money also helps: Those little aerials decorate more Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs than Mazdas and Chevrolets. The average monthly bill in Los Angeles is $150--$45 for access to the system and more than $100 for calls, at 45 cents a minute in peak hours, charged on incoming and outgoing calls and even uncompleted calls to busy numbers. In fact, need doesn’t matter either: Car phones are often advertised in sports pages, along with computers, spas and fitness equipment, aimed at an audience that’s male, affluent and into expensive toys.

The safety question came up early in personal anecdotes: Everybody had seen someone weaving down the highway with a phone in his ear. Minnesota state Sen. Ronald R. Dicklich (D-Hibbing) unsuccessfully proposed banning the use of hand-held car phones after being forced off the road last summer by a car-phone user. New Jersey state Assemblyman Harold L. Colburn Jr. (R-Moorestown) was also nearly hit several times. Hence, his current proposal prohibiting use of car phones while in motion unless they’re used hands-free.

In response, industry representatives say car phone users are generally safer drivers, being affluent, middle-aged businessmen. They cite a 1985 study sponsored by AT&T.; Of 1,000 cellular phone subscribers queried in the Washington area, 7.4% of the 305 who replied said they were in an accident the previous year. By comparison, of 1,000 American Automobile Assn. members also queried, 10.2% of the 453 who answered had been in accidents.

Highway Patrol Study

Then they cite a 1985-86 California Highway Patrol study which said using a car phone was safer than tuning a car radio, if the phone was hand-held and voice-activated. (Nobody quotes the judgment that manual dialing “significantly increases the probability of accident.”) What’s more, said the study, car phones make everyone safer, because their owners call to report accidents and other highway emergencies. (About 28% of the CHP’s 1.2 million “911” calls last year came from car phones.)

Users think the safety question already moot, given the optional hands-free microphone now included with most phones sold, and the memory-dialing feature on all models. No one knows how often either feature is used.

Threatened with legislation, the industry says that car phones are just one of many distractions, and common sense dictates that one should drive with equal care whether talking on the phone, listening to a radio or talking to a passenger. Opponents, such as Scott Sande, administrative assistant to Minnesota’s Dicklich, believe that “you’re more wrapped up in a phone conversation, and both your mind and hand are engaged.”

At the moment, car phone use is governed only by general laws of “due care” while driving. In Britain, anyone talking on the phone while driving could be immediately fined for not driving “with due care.” But in the United States, there must be a citable secondary effect such as weaving or tailgating.

State legislatures seem unwilling to define “due care” as applied to car phones, although they’ve had no trouble prohibiting a comparable distraction, the use of stereo headsets while driving. But the cellular phone industry knows exactly what due care is, and it’s not just the purchase of hands-free models. PacTel Cellular, the nation’s largest carrier, suggests subscribers “dial when your car is not in motion.” Motorola, the best-selling brand, says flatly in its product instructions that mobile-phone users “should not use the cellular telephone while the vehicle is in motion.”

Meanwhile, the price of cellular car phones has come down, from $1,500 to $2,000 four or five years ago to $500 or less. But market growth is limited by the number of calls a system can handle: Los Angeles, with more than 200,000 subscribers, will run out of capacity by 1991, says Jachke.

It’s limited also by the cost of service, which hasn’t come down. That situation is being investigated by the California Public Utilities Commission, and challenged by state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles). He wants to revise the marketing structure, in which telephone sellers now contract with a single carrier (or its authorized agent) to sign up customers as subscribers when they buy the phone. The consumer doesn’t get the phone unless he takes the service, doesn’t get a choice of carriers, and the service stays high-priced.

Rosenthal, concerned five years ago with safety of car phones, is now interested in their availability to the mass market, proof perhaps that their acceptance has gone beyond safety questions. But the more mass the market, the greater the question. “As declining prices make the availability of this practical business tool an attractive toy,” the AAA warned when it participated in AT&T;’s 1985 safety study, “roadways could become a playground for those who might not drive as safely.”