What? No Car Phones? Sorry, Can’t Hear You

Slouching toward Taco Bell in early lunch hour traffic, Dr. John K.F. de Beixedon is the federal government’s new worst nightmare. The Pasadena internist is using a cell phone while driving and trying to order a takeout meal (fiesta chicken burrito, hard-shell chicken taco and a diet Pepsi).

His multi-tasking agenda puts De Beixedon squarely at odds with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Washington, D.C. On Tuesday, the agency tossed a monkey wrench at autophilic Southern California when it recommended that drivers refrain from chatting on cell phones, reading e-mail, surfing the Internet or engaging in other potentially life-shortening forms of wireless communication while in motion.

This week, Southern California drivers alternately pondered and fretted over the Feds’ safety edict (while driving and talking on their cell phones, of course). Some were wary of any government incursion on their right to keep and bear Motorolas. Others sympathized with the goal of reducing accidents and injuries but said they already try to police themselves while yakking their way from point A to point B.

As a physician, De Beixedon is all for putting safety first. And as a motorist, he says, he always adheres to certain rules of the cellular road, such as dialing phone numbers only when stopped at a red light or on a relatively uncrowded stretch of freeway.

Like many Southern Californians, De Beixedon (who’s also a professional magician) regards cell phones and other high-tech gizmos as increasingly indispensable workplace props. If he had to pull over every time he needed to call his office or check on a patient, he’d be wasting invaluable hours each week.

“There are some people who can do multiple things at once. There are some people who can’t walk without tripping,” says De Beixedon, 37, speaking by cell phone while running errands. “I know a guy with one arm who’s an excellent driver, and nobody ever says, ‘Hey dude, why don’t you have two arms? Don’t you know you’re a danger?’ ”

It’s well-known that Southern Californians already use their cars for eating, napping, shaving, applying deodorant, reading trashy novels and making love.

Our cars have long since become surrogate offices, salons, kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms, from which almost no bodily function or work-related task, however delicate, is banned. In 1993, when The Times’ former View section invited readers to submit accounts of their automotive / gastronomic exploits, one woman said she’d managed to consume an entire Chinese meal with chopsticks while negotiating the Hollywood Freeway with a five-speed manual transmission. The regional motto might well be: Don’t tread on us; in fact, better give us a two-lane berth instead.

Carol Gunneson, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent in Marina del Rey, is talking on her cell phone while filling up at a 76 station on Santa Monica Boulevard, on her way to present a counteroffer. Whenever possible, she says, “I dial when I’m stationary, either at a red light or I pull over to the curb.”

In her profession, Gunneson believes a cell phone is essential. On any given day she may have four or five showings in a row and be running late, annoying both clients and other agents had she no way of alerting them.

And, she points out, public pay phones are not only few and far between but rapidly vanishing entirely. However, Gunneson underlines, a cell phone “is not to be used as a status symbol or to show that you are unbelievably important.”

Mike Hamilburg, a Beverly Hills literary agent, is talking from his Volvo station wagon at the corner of Robertson Boulevard and Gregory Way. He’s just picked up a tuna sandwich at a local deli and has pulled off the road to wolf it down.

While he thinks some restriction on talking while driving would be good--”These phones have become a little out of hand”--he points out that there are other prominent driver distractions less easily regulated, “like changing the radio. And I must admit I might glance at the paper at a stop signal.”

Still, Hamilburg concedes that more high-tech toys on wheels mean more potential distractions and more near-misses. (The traffic safety agency estimates that about one-quarter of all U.S. auto accidents are caused by some type of distraction.) He still remembers years ago, driving on Wilshire Boulevard, looking down at the radio and rear-ending another car while going about 25 miles an hour.

Today, he says, it’s much more dangerous out there. “There’s so much that darts out at you, so many people go through signals. We seem to be moving so much faster. We have to work at slowing down. There’s so much that appears to be important that isn’t.”

Hamilburg describes cell phones as “a wonderful luxury,” albeit a potentially expensive one. For his wife, Susan, who teaches at Canyon Charter School in Santa Monica and cannot use the office phone, her cell phone supplies a lifeline to her ailing mother and keeps her in touch with the couple’s daughters, 10 and 13, who have full slates of extracurricular activities.

At least one local authority thinks cell phone conversing actually may heighten one’s pedal-pushing reflexes--or vice versa. “When people are out driving around they’re a little sharper, a little more focused, whereas when people are at home they’re a little more at their leisure,” says Larry Mantle, who should know as program director and host of the long-running morning call-in radio show “Larry Mantle’s AirTalk” on KPCC-FM (89.3). “When people are out on the road they’re a little more intense, and that makes for a better call.”

Sixteen years ago, when Mantle launched his show, there were no cellular callers. Today, he estimates, three-quarters of his calls come from cell phone users. Mantle knows of at least one public radio station in a major U.S. city that, for safety reasons, refuses to take on-air cell phone calls. However, he says, so far not one accident has occurred “while someone was talking to us.”

Aaggh, look out for that jackknifed watermelon truck!!! (Just kidding. . . .)

More High-Tech Car Toys Are in the Works

Cell phones, the Feds are concerned, may be only the iceberg’s tip of the upcoming diversions. In the brave new world of high-tech motoring you’ll supposedly be able to tune in the Wimbledon finals, get traffic directions to Kmart from your Global Positioning System, download Britney Spears’ latest music video and send a birthday videogram to Uncle Max in Terre Haute--all while car-pooling to the office or schlepping the kids to soccer practice.

Bob Sanitsky, head of worldwide television and executive vice president of International Creative Management, already has most of that hardware loaded onto his Jaguar XK8 convertible. He thinks that a blanket restriction of motorists’ cell phone use would be “the worst prohibition since alcohol in 1921,” and wishes the Feds would spend their time looking into the possible health risks of cell phones and other wireless technology.

“I watch people shaving in the mirrors with electric razors, I see women putting on nail polish, I see people reading the paper folded up,” he says. “I think (using a cell phone) is infinitely safer.”

It’s the heart of rush hour, and attorney Gloria Allred is driving her Porsche 928 west on Wilshire Boulevard--and conducting an interview from her cell phone. In other words, it’s business as usual.

For a long time, Allred says, she resisted getting a cell phone, trying to preserve some modicum of “telephone free” time in her day just to listen to the radio. As a lawyer, she logs hours of phone time. On weekends she’s a talk radio host, “basically taking phone calls.”

But she came to see a cell phone as a necessity for keeping her in touch with both office and home. Today, she carries a second cell phone in her handbag, in case she needs to take or make a call, for example, while “walking out of the courthouse to my car.”

Safety is a major concern--she tells of her car breaking down one midnight en route from Long Beach. “I’m single,” she says, “and not in a dating relationship,” which means she’s often driving alone.

“Oops,” she says, maneuvering through traffic. “I guess a lot of people are trying to go on the Santa Monica Freeway.”

This week, Allred, who is Juditha Brown’s attorney, held a news conference about the latest twists in the O.J. Simpson case. “I was getting calls from early morning all through the day,” including those from Fox News and Court TV. If she is to return media calls promptly, she says, “I need to be able to call from my car.”

Allred doesn’t yet have a car fax but has “definitely thought about it.” “Instead of fantasizing about sexy men, I fantasize about having all kinds of gadgets in my car to help me do business while I’m driving.” She laughs, suggesting that “maybe one day there’s going to be a therapist for people who are cell-phone and technology dependent.”

Her guess?

Those therapists “will return calls from patients from the cell phones in their cars.”

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Times staff writer Beverly Beyette contributed to this article.