Up to Her Elbows in Driving Distractions

She is a woman of our times, the type who juggles family and career and therefore can’t waste a second. With the year 2000 approaching, let’s call her Thoroughly Modern Millie--short for millennium.

Every weekday morning, Millie rises early to read the paper and get the kids dressed and fed. Her husband goes one way and she goes the other, chauffeuring “the beasts” to school before heading to the downtown nerve center of a major corporation, where she supervises a staff of about 40 workers.

Millie actually starts bossing people en route. On surface streets or the freeway, she uses her cell phone to pester worker bees based on the East Coast.

In doing so, she may well be pestering her fellow motorists as well. Most of us have always suspected that people who telecommunicate while they commute are putting the rest of us at risk. And now a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that driving under the influence of a cellular phone can be as hazardous as driving drunk, quadrupling the risk of an accident.

The day this report made front-page news, I asked Millie if she could fit a short interview into her busy schedule. She said she’d call me Friday--from her car.

*

“Right now I’m on Beverly,” she tells me. “I’m heading for the freeway.”

If you picture a woman with her right hand on the steering wheel and her left pressing a phone to an ear, you are only partly right. Perhaps because she has a controlling nature, perhaps because she likes the feeling of power, Thoroughly Modern Millie happens to drive a manual transmission. So picture her with one hand holding the cell phone, the other maneuvering the stick shift.

“Now I’m putting on my sunglasses,” she adds, laughing a little. “Yes, it does mean I don’t have my hands on the steering wheel, but I’m only going 20 mph, so if I hit anything it won’t cause much damage.

“Fortunately this car is still new and the alignment is pretty good, so if you take your hands off the wheel, you still go straight for a while.”

The tricky part of phoning while driving, of course, is punching the numbers. To call me, Millie first had to turn on the gadget, then punch in 1, the three-digit area code and a seven-digit phone number. Then she punched my five-digit extension. Given her experience with the technology, you might think she could manipulate it without looking. She can’t.

Often she’ll take advantage of red lights to make her calls, but not always. Sometimes, she admits, she’s glancing from road to phone, road to phone, road to phone. . . .

“Sometimes I steer with my elbows.”

I ask her if she, like me, drinks coffee while she drives. The answer is yes, sometimes. I’m relieved to learn that she doesn’t talk on the phone, shift gears and drink coffee at the same time. It’s good she hasn’t figured out how to hold a coffee cup with her elbow.

It comes as a surprise when she says that drinking coffee while driving is harder than using a phone. The fear of spilling coffee on her sartorial selections for the day seems greater than the fear of causing a crash while using a cellular phone.

Does she ever worry that her cell-phone habits make her a menace to society?

“Sometimes,” she admits. “I’ve had a couple of close calls.”

Does she plan to change her ways?

“No. Not unless I get into an accident.”

It’s not that she’s an uncaring person. She’s actually rather considerate. But obviously Millie thinks she’s got everything under control--or close enough, at least.

“I’ve got air bags,” she says blithely.

And if her cell phone ever does cause a crash, Millie can use it to call for help.

*

Drive around long enough in Southern California and you’re bound to see people do all sorts of things behind the steering wheel that have nothing to do with driving. Women apply makeup while men apply Norelcos. My colleague Steve Harvey, in his Only in L.A. column, recently noted sightings of one driver playing a trumpet and another operating a portable computer set against a steering wheel. Another Angeleno drives with his parrot perched on the steering wheel.

A friend once worked with a TV producer who had a television installed in his dashboard. He thought nothing of driving around while watching his shows. Now he probably watches TV and talks on the phone while he drives. Hope he doesn’t drive a stick.

And we’ve all heard tales of people doing things while driving that are more commonly done by consenting adults in more private settings. Talk about distracting.

Hmmm. Come to think of it, how do we know motorists with phones stuck to their ear aren’t calling one of those 976 numbers that charge by the minute? No, on second thought, they couldn’t be; cellular phone bills are so enormous to begin with.

I know this because for a couple of months I had one myself. I made a few calls while driving, of the hey-Mom-guess-where-I’m-calling-from variety, and though I drive an automatic, it never felt safe. Then came the first monthly bill--more than a hundred bucks, and I felt like I’d hardly used the damn thing.

I’d picked it up on a whim. What happened was this: I was purchasing a new car and the finance guy told me about a special promotion the dealership was offering with a cellular company. A “free” cell phone could be mine if I just signed up for 90 days of service. Nice to have in an emergency, he said. Being in my acquisitive mood, I said, “Why not?”

It was easy to understand why the cellular industry wants to give away phones. Now I find myself a little suspicious about the automotive industry. The formula may look something like this:

More distractions=more wrecks=more cars sales.

And those thoroughly modern motorists would have only themselves to blame.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.