Hang Up and Drive
photo by Dave
Once again, the Vermont Legislature decided not to pass any legislation this year dealing with drivers who chatter away on their cell phones while speeding along the Interstate or weaving through the hills on country roads.
No surprise. Nobody is really pushing for such legislation. Vermont has no organized interest group lobbying for auto safety at all.
The pubic at large seems to support restrictions on driving while phoning. In State Sen. Bill Doyle’s unscientific but widely cited Town Meeting Poll last March, a whopping 75 percent of some 7,500 respondents said drivers should be “prohibited from using cell phones while driving.”
But absent a well-organized (and, preferably, well-heeled) lobby, mere majority support doesn’t always get very far.
Nor is the Legislature’s reluctance to limit cell-phone use at all unusual. No state prohibits motorists from using their phones while driving, and only California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and both Washingtons (State and D.C.) ban the use of hand-held phones, according to the National Institute for Highway Safety.
(Several states prohibit school bus drivers from using cell phones, and 13 outlaw text messaging by drivers).
But in the last week or so, new information and new revelations have rekindled the movement to restrict – if not simply outlaw – driving while talking on the phone everywhere, even in Vermont.
“There will be a stronger consideration of it (next) year,” said Sen. Richard Mazza, the Grand Isle Democrat who chairs the Transportation Committee. “I hear more and more complaints on a daily basis. We’ll certainly have a hearing and listen to all points of view.” He said he would be most receptive to proposals to outlaw text messaging, which seemed to him to be more dangerous than merely telephoning.
Mazza’s outlook is important not only because of his chairmanship but because he has been one of the lawmakers reluctant to push for any restrictions beyond banning novice drivers from using cell phones.
“I had some questions,” he said. Now he is “open to any suggestions.”
Like almost everyone else involved in the cell-phone-while-driving discussion, Mazza has seen or read about the new reports that appear to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that a driver who is talking on the phone is far more likely to get into a serious accident.
As likely, say the studies, as a driver who is drunk.
The studies by universities, government agencies and insurance companies refute almost all the arguments made by opponents of restrictions on phoning from behind the wheel. A driver talking on the phone, the studies say, is more likely to get into an accident than one who is drinking a cup of coffee or eating a sandwich or applying make-up or trying to find the right CD to put into the player.
Nor does it make any difference whether the cell phone is hand-held, the studies say.
That’s because, according to a lengthy article in last Sunday’s New York Times, the damaging – and often fatal – diversion is not to the driver’s hands, or even eyes. It’s to the mind. A driver talking on the phone, say the research scientists, is more likely to “see” in his mind’s eye the person to whom he is talking, or whatever they are talking about, than the road in front of him.
Wouldn’t an intense discussion between the driver and passengers produce the same result? No, say the researchers. Even while talking, the passenger provides another set of eyes on the road, and conversation tends to ebb in heavy traffic or bad weather.
Some of this information has just become public because the Bush Administration reportedly pressured the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration not to release the results of much of its research, and not to conduct more comprehensive studies.
After the Los Angeles Times and Mother Jones Magazine wrote about the research last year, two consumer groups, Public Citizen and the Center for Auto safety, filed Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for the documents. The New York Times, which wrote about the apparent cover-up earlier this week, has posted the documents on its web site.
There does appear to be one statistic that calls into question the conclusion that cell phone driving is inherently dangerous: the number of accidents is actually going down, even as cell phone use increases.
But the researchers point out that antilock brakes, better steering systems, and safer roads are responsible for the decline in accidents, which would be steeper were it not for cell phone use.
The researchers do admit that they wished they had more data. No one is really sure how many accidents are attributable to cell phone use because the accident forms of most states, including Vermont, don’t list phone use as a possible reason for the accident.
The Vermont form does list “technology related distraction” as one of many possible contributors to an accident. But Mary Spicer , the Transportation Agency’s Supervisor of Highway Research, said most law enforcement officers found that category “hard to prove, because there might be other causes.”
Spicer said once a year a Traffic Record Coordinating Committee made up of law enforcement officials and legislators meets to revise the accident report.
The politics of the cell phone motorist dispute are, at the very least, interesting. There is on the one hand (as that Bill Doyle poll suggests) widespread support for more highway safety laws. But opposition to cracking down on cell phone use seems to come as much from the general public – or at least the cell-phoning general public, which by now is most people – as it does from the cell phone industry.
It isn’t that people don’t believe it’s dangerous to drive while phoning. In a survey conducted by the Nationwide Mutual Insurance company last year, far more respondents (48 percent) chose “using technology like a cellphone) as “the most dangerous distraction” than any other. (Next was “reading,” at 18 percent.)
But 81 percent of them said they’ve talked on their cell phones while driving, while almost all of them (98 percent) considered themselves safe drivers.
As contradictions go, this one exceeds the common American inconsistency of insisting on maximum government services but low taxes. That’s a rational contradiction. This one is irrational, sort of like, “stop me before I kill again, but actually don’t stop me.”
In many states, including Vermont, regulating cell phone use is also seen as somehow an infringement on personal freedom. During the legislative debate this year, which also included a proposal to tighten seat belt restrictions, Democratic Rep. John Rodgers of Glover invoked “liberty” and “freedom” as reasons to oppose laws that might make motorists safer.
“If we are truly trying to remove all risks for Vermonters, then perhaps we should outlaw skiing and snowboarding,” Rodgers said.
But the connection between “liberty” and limiting cell phone use in cars is obscure, or perhaps non-existent. There is no right to drive. If there were, drivers wouldn’t need a license. No license is needed to speak freely, worship where one chooses (or nowhere) or be safe against unreasonable search and seizure in one’s home. Those are rights.
The state, which created, maintains, and patrols the highway system may make any reasonable rules and regulations to protect drivers from one another and themselves. Americans are not less free because of speed limits and stop signs. Freedom, which is not the right to do whatever one pleases regardless of the consequences, is not a factor in this discussion.
Which is not to say there are no civil liberties considerations. Any law banning drivers from talking on the phone grants a lot of discretion – arguably too much – to the individual cop, who can decide which drivers to pull over and which ones to ignore. Most law enforcement officers would not pick out those drivers whose looks, or cars, or preferred candidates as revealed by bumper sticker offended them. A few would.
And even some advocates of tougher regulation acknowledge that the issue is complicated.
“It’s an extremely difficult issue,” said Judy Stone of Advocates for Highway and Auto safety, a Washington-based lobby financed by consumer organizations and the insurance industry. “It’s very hard to enforce. We really have the capability of limiting the use of cell phones. .We could make it impossible to use a phone if the car’s in motion. It’s technically possible. Is it politically feasible?
Not now, apparently. But people like Rep. Betty Nuovo, the Middlebury Democrat who sponsored a bill that failed this year, said she and her allies will try again next year to impose at least some restrictions on cell phone use.
“After what I’ve read in the last three or four days” she said, “now we have real information, real evidence. Before it was anecdotal. This is scary. You kill people.”
Tags: cell phones
