Pushing for Two Hands on the Wheel
Sacramento
There was a sudden loud clunk of colliding metal as my sports car spun. The other driver, holding a cell phone to his ear, muttered a common obscenity while stepping onto the glass-splattered street.
“I’ll have to call back,” the young yakker told his phone partner, slamming closed the device that I figured had obscured my vehicle from his vision.
Neither of us was seriously hurt. But our small cars were totaled.
And ever since I’ve been extra wary of motor-mouth drivers clutching cell phones -- whether in tinny, flyweight compacts or in armored SUV tanks. Whether they’re tailgating nervously on the freeway, racing inattentively into merging traffic or barging along bumper-to-bumper downtown.
Admittedly, I’m biased anyway against these new nuisance necessities-of-life. They rudely interrupt relaxing lunches and prompt normal people to walk around in a daze, seemingly talking to themselves. Fine, let cell phones raise other people’s blood pressures. My cell stays off until I want to use it, which is rare.
“Almost everybody has a story to tell,” says Assemblyman Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto). “An accident that didn’t have to happen. A career damaged. A life lost.”
Simitian, 49, is a former Santa Clara County supervisor, Palo Alto mayor and school board president. He repre-
sents the Silicon Valley, but doesn’t worship everything high-tech.
In fact, he’s trying to take cell phones out of the hands of drivers.
No, he’s not trying to snatch everybody’s car phone. Relax, radio talk-show hosts.
Simitian would allow cell phones in vehicles. He’d just require them to be hands-free for drivers.
“When you’ve got one hand on the wheel and one hand clutching a cell phone to your ear, you’re not in complete control of your car,” the lawmaker notes, using simple logic.
Violators would be fined the same as people caught not wearing seat belts: $20 the first time, $50 thereafter.
His bill would exempt emergency calls.
There are many hands-free devices and attachments available, from simple earplugs and headsets to installed speakerphones. Some fancy new phones even can be dialed by voice.
New York is the only state with a similar law. But it has been in effect just one year. There’s no conclusion yet about its impact on safety.
A Harvard University study released Monday reported that the death toll from crashes caused by drivers talking into cell phones is rising significantly. It estimated 2,600 fatalities a year, compared with 1,000 two years ago.
Last year in California, according to a Times analysis, at least 4,699 accidents were blamed on drivers using cell phones. Those crashes killed 31 and injured 2,768.
“It surprised me, the number of cell phones involved in accidents,” says CHP Commissioner Dwight O. “Spike” Helmick.
Researchers don’t know what types of cell phones were being used: hand-held or hands-free. So Helmick says the CHP will dig deeper to collect that data.
Meanwhile, Helmick adds, “it just makes common sense that if you’re not holding a cell phone, you’re safer. Inherently, you’re safer to have both hands free.”
Simitian has proposed his ban on hand-held phones for three straight years, the latest time Monday as the new Legislature convened. His first two bills were narrowly killed by the Assembly Transportation Committee. But this third time may be the charm.
Helmick previously opposed the legislation, arguing that hand-held phones weren’t a big problem. But now, he says, if Simitian’s bill passes, “I’ll probably recommended it be given favorable consideration” by Gov. Gray Davis.
The cell-phone industry is split and opposition is softening. Some previous opponents are reconsidering, suspecting they have bigger battles to fight.
Verizon Wireless has supported Simitian’s bills, preferring one statewide law to potentially different restrictions imposed by several local governments. That fear also was the driving force behind New York’s law.
Skeptics note that drivers also are distracted when using hands-free cell phones. But at least both hands are on the wheel and their sight’s not impaired.
Motorists can lose focus punching radio buttons, eating a hamburger or lecturing the kids. But these actions don’t require much thought -- not like talking and listening through static to somebody not sharing your present driving experience.
“When you’re on the phone with somebody and they say, ‘I want a divorce,’ that engages you,” Simitian observes. “You’re thinking about one thing and looking at something else. And you don’t have both hands to control the vehicle.
“We’ve got to solve the problems we can solve.”
This is one problem that the Legislature can solve, although too late for my sports car.
