Phones Blamed in More Crashes
The CHP has pulled back a report to legislators on the role of mobile phones in traffic accidents after learning it may have drastically understated the problem.
At the same time, California Highway Patrol commissioner Dwight O. “Spike” Helmick said he has changed his view and now believes California should permit drivers to use only hands-free equipment. Such a bill is being introduced next month in the Legislature for the third time.
“I must tell you I advocated against the mandatory hands-free cell phone bill, thinking that it [cell phone distraction] wasn’t a problem,” Helmick said last week.
“But I have changed my view after looking at the data. I was absolutely amazed at how high the cellular phone [accident rate] was. There is an easy fix for this, and that is requiring equipment that would make it hands-free.”
The report, which has not been made public, was ordered last year by the Legislature to inform its debate about mobile phone use by drivers. New York -- like 22 countries -- requires that phones in vehicles be hands-free; other states are considering similar laws.
But the report counted only 913 accidents in 2001 for which police officers across California indicated that cell phone use was to blame. Three of those accidents involved fatalities, and 423 caused injuries.
A Times analysis of statewide traffic accident data showed that the total would be far higher if it included all accidents in which the driver responsible for the crash was using a cell phone. Officers began collecting these numbers in April 2001, Helmick said, at the urging of the Automobile Club of Southern California. These figures show that at least 4,699 accidents were blamed on drivers using cell phones, and that those accidents killed 31 people and injured 2,786.
Because the data producing the higher figures were collected for only nine months of 2001, the number of accidents involving cell phones could be well over 6,000 for the full year.
The report was sent to Gov. Gray Davis last week for his approval before being released to the Legislature. Helmick said it was pulled back so that CHP statistics brought to his attention by The Times could be included.
Helmick said the reworked report would include data showing that drivers using cell phones had been blamed for nearly seven times the number of accidents that the CHP had originally cited in its report.
“We’re not changing any of our conclusions. It’s just adding additional data that might make it clearer for everybody,” Helmick said.
It’s unclear why so many officers did not fill in the appropriate box on their accident reports for cellular-phone distraction when the driver responsible for the crash was using one at the time.
They may have been discouraged from making that judgment by instructions from the CHP: “The activity should be verified by [a] witness, involved party statements, and/or physical evidence before documented as an associated factor [driver distraction in causing an accident].”
Chief Stan Perez of the CHP’s enforcement division said the report, as originally drafted, did not include statistics showing all accidents blamed on drivers using cell phones because investigators had not made a connection between cell phone use and the accident’s cause in every case.
The statistical problem is illustrated by accident reports submitted by CHP officers who patrol the Santa Monica and San Bernardino freeways, from Santa Monica to the San Bernardino County line. They investigated 1,242 accidents involving drivers using cell phones, blamed 590 of those accidents on cell phone-using drivers, and then reported that driver distraction because of cell phone use was a contributing factor in only two of those accidents.
“Without a doubt, there’s something wrong there,” Helmick said. “Clearly the numbers do not look right, nor do I think they’re right.”
Lt. Karl Schuler of the Costa Mesa Police Department, whose accident investigators reported more drivers distracted by cell phones than any other police jurisdiction in the state, scoffed at the lower figures reported by much larger cities.
“In all of Los Angeles, there were only 28 accidents blamed on cell phone inattention last year, while we had 60 in Costa Mesa. C’mon,” he said. “I can guarantee you that in ... these other big cities, there were a lot more than what they’re showing up with. And it’s probably because the officers aren’t putting it on [their reports].”
The CHP report could determine the fate of a bill prohibiting California drivers from using hand-held cell phones, a bill that Assemblyman Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) said he will introduce next month. It died on 10-9 votes in the Assembly’s transportation committee in the last two sessions of the Legislature.
Simitian welcomed Helmick’s change of heart -- “I think that’s good news” -- and expressed hope that his bill would pass and be signed into law next year.
“I have argued from the outset that this bill ... will save lives. And if the data [are] now so compelling as to bring new support to the bill, I’m nothing but delighted.”
