Driving Takes 2 Hands, No Cellphones
In July 2001, a distinctive and powerful voice at this newspaper argued that drivers should not be allowed to talk on cellphones while behind the wheel of a moving vehicle. That courageous voice knew he would face contempt from chatty people everywhere, but in the noblest traditions of wanting nothing more than to serve mankind, he heroically stood his ground.
OK, it was me.
Here we are four years later, and you can still drive while holding a cellphone to your ear. Or, you can try to. As we’ve come to find out, some of us can pull off the feat; others cannot.
Why dredge up the subject again?
The answer is that we ran a Page One story this week about an Australian survey that indicated cellphone users are four times more likely to be involved in injury-related accidents than people who aren’t on the phone.
The survey added the nugget that using a headset doesn’t reduce the accident risk. In other words, the distractibility factor in the conversation is the major culprit.
When I made that argument four years ago, I didn’t exactly consider it Aristotelian brilliance. Isn’t it rather obvious that the business of talking on the phone -- with all the variants of where a conversation might lead -- reduces someone’s ability to drive safely?
I grant that cellphones have a place on the road. Sometimes it’s critical to make a call. But we all know what most of the calls go for -- something along these lines: “Hi, I’m just pulling out of the parking lot .... Hi, I’m around the corner from the house. I’ll be home in less than a minute .... Hi, did you take the meat out of the freezer?”
My bottom line was that if you must use the phone in the car, it’s not that tough anywhere in California to find a ramp or a side street or a parking lot in which you can stop. While at rest, make the critical call. Use your phone judiciously.
The Australian survey was overseen by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a Washington-area organization. It used Australia, it said, because it couldn’t get adequate phone records from American companies.
I’m not as lone a voice as I once thought. State Sen. Joe Simitian plans to present a bill next year requiring drivers to use hands-free technology if on the phone in the car. The Australian survey says that doesn’t help, but I won’t deduct points from Simitian for that. He’s doing what he can, given that his earlier efforts first languished in the Assembly and then in the Senate.
Simitian, a Palo Alto Democrat, sees things pretty much like I do. Like me, he doesn’t claim any particular genius in that, since it sounds like such obvious common sense.
He says he doesn’t favor banning cellphones in cars, partly because such legislation wouldn’t pass anyway. He’d settle for the reasonable compromise: to require that drivers at least keep two hands free, even if they insist on having a phone conversation and risk getting distracted.
In recent years, Simitian says, the California Highway Patrol found that cellphone use was the leading reason that drivers became distracted. Cellphone operation, by definition, means that at various points your hearing, vision and concentration will be diverted from driving.
Why in the world wouldn’t we try to minimize that?
Cellphone companies argue that they shouldn’t be singled out and that drivers face all kinds of in-car distractions. No one disputes that. Yes, other people in the car can distract you. Yes, your mind can wander whether you’re on the phone or not.
The point is, we can’t ban passengers in a car, and we can’t ban thinking. But we can ban phones or, at the very least, try to regulate their use a bit.
I respect the argument about personal freedom. However, we don’t let people drive with one foot out the window or drive while blindfolded, so I think there’s some libertarian wiggle room on regulating phone use.
Simitian has an imminently sensible approach.
Is anyone out there listening?
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Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.
