Quoted Text

Hang up and drive

    New York got it half right in 2001 when it became the first state to ban driving with a handheld cellphone, but allowed them as long as they are hands-free. It should have gone all the way and forbade drivers from using them altogether. That’s because it isn’t the phone in the hand but the phone itself that is the problem — and a very serious one. We may not have known that then, but we do now.
    How do we know? Researchers have told us. Ongoing research at the University of Utah that uses driving simulators and electrodes to measure brain activity has found using a cellphone while driving increases the risk of accident fourfold, the same as driving drunk. And it doesn’t matter whether the device is hand-held or handsfree; with both, the driver is equally distracted. Or as David Strayer, director of the Applied Cognition Laboratory at the university, put it, “It’s not that your hands aren’t on the wheel, it’s that your mind is not on the road.”
    For some unknown reason, chatting with a passenger in the next seat doesn’t have the same effect. Nor does listening to audio books or radio talk shows (even when a quiz shows that the driver was really listening and processing the information). On the other hand, movements like reaching for a falling cup or for something in the glove compartment increase the risk of accident far more than using a cellphone.
    An all-out ban on using cellphones while driving, called for by the National Safety Council this week, would surely be controversial. More than 266 million people now subscribe to these wireless devices, and using them in the car is quite convenient.
    But as evidenced above, also quite dangerous. The National Safety Council thinks the answer is education about the risk, as it was with drunken driving and seatbelts, both of which were once not taken seriously before but certainly are now.
    Something else that could help is our wonderful legal system. In December 2007 International Paper Co. agreed to pay a $5.2 million settlement to a Georgia woman who was rear-ended by one of its employees, who was driving a company car and talking on a company cellphone at the time of the accident. The suit is among the most recent of several cases where an employer has been held liable for an accident caused by a driver using a cellphone, causing some large companies, including Exxon-Mobil and Shell, to ban employees’ use of any type of cellphone while driving during work hours.
    These companies have policies requiring their employees to pull off the road before conducting business by cellphone. What’s really needed are laws requiring all drivers to do the same.