2 Lawmakers Seek to Ban Drivers’ Use of Hand-Held Cell Phones

Two weeks after a Pennsylvania mother recounted to Congress how her daughter was killed when a driver dialing a cell phone hit her car, two lawmakers introduced bills Tuesday to ban the use of hand-held cell phones in vehicles.

Although the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration urged Congress to be patient until definitive data on cell phone use could be assessed, Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) said the evidence warranted action.

“Accidents and near collisions are occurring all over our nation because too many drivers hold the wheel with one hand and their cell phone in the other,” Ackerman said.

Their measures are the latest in a wave of restrictions being sought on drivers’ use of cell phones, one of the fastest-selling consumer electronic devices in history, with more than 115 million subscribers in the United States.

Three states have already enacted minor restrictions on cell phone use. California, one of the three, requires rental cars to be equipped with instructions on safely using the devices.

Across the rest of the country, about 100 bills pending in 40 states would pose even tougher restrictions, according to the Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures.

New York, whose governor has issued an executive order banning state employees from using cell phones in cars, could become the first state to ban the use of the devices by all motorists under most circumstances.

The moves come after Patricia Pena, the founder of Advocates for Cell Phone Safety, urged Congress on May 9 to address the alleged dangers of cell phone use in cars. Pena, of Perkasie, Pa., said her 2-year-old daughter, Morgan Lee, was killed in November 1999 when a driver with a cell phone plowed into her car.

Corzine and Ackerman acted as other lawmakers called on federal regulators to scrutinize cell phones on another front: their possible adverse health effects.

Citing a General Accounting Office report that found current research on the health effects of cell phones to be inconclusive, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said the government should assess and publish the results for consumers to see.

The industry’s trade group, the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Assn., said no federal action was needed on either front. The group said laws already on the books were sufficient to police unsafe cell phone use.

“Common sense can’t be legislated,” the group said in a statement.

While distractions ranging from fast food to computerized navigational devices are increasingly competing for drivers’ attention, cell phones have triggered ire like no other.

Ackerman’s measure would bar drivers from using cell phones without earpieces or speakers to permit hands-free operation. Corzine’s bill would impose similar restrictions but would give the states more leeway to set exemptions that would not pose a threat to public safety.

Both bills would allow each state to set penalties for any violation. States that failed to implement the ban would lose a portion of their federal highway funds.

Once a status symbol, wireless phones are now the subject of a more complicated love-hate relationship with the American public even as they have become as ubiquitous as toasters and car radios.

“We have a real problem with cell phones,” said Adam Thierer, director of telecommunications studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C. “People think, ‘I use the cell phone safely,’ but when they see others use it they think it’s annoying or unsafe. But using a cell phone does not pose nearly as serious a risk in the car as arguing with your wife or kids, stuffing your face with a Big Mac or putting on makeup.”

Some policymakers maintain that cell phones are different because they engage users in a unique way.

“Unlike eating a hamburger, there’s a cognitive angle your brain is engaged in when using a cell phone that requires actual thought,” said Becki Ames, an aide to California Assemblyman George Nakano (D-Torrance). Nakano has introduced a bill to require police to collect data on whether cell phones or other in-car devices may have contributed to driver distraction.

The role of cell phones in traffic accidents has been hotly debated, and there is little definitive data. Twenty states now collect information about whether a wireless phone or two-way radio was a factor in a crash. But only four of those states--Oklahoma, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Tennessee--have been collecting data long enough to have issued reports.

Oklahoma said that, of 79,120 crashes reported in the state in 1999, only 0.1% involved cell phones or other wireless radio devices. Similarly, cell phones were a factor in less than 1% of all accidents reported in 1999 in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

Given the paucity of data, Robert Shelton, executive director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, told lawmakers more study was needed. “It’s premature to push for federal legislation in this area,” he told lawmakers May 9.