Cell Phones and Driving

Today the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) called for a ban on all cell phone talking and texting while driving. It brought out all the studies of the past couple of decades as well as newer ones, all of which show that driving while talking on a phone – and especially while texting – increases one’s chance of having an accident – and killing oneself or someone else – at least as much as driving while legally drunk. And tapping in phone numbers or text is only part of the distraction. As much or more of a problem is the psychic distance that someone enters when making a call or reading text messages – they move out of the context of their car and off into some nether-cyber-world, their minds literally off the road and into space. This is why it’s just as dangerous with hands-free phones as with hands-on phones (though more dangerous with texting). Here are just a few of the findings from various studies:

·         Between 2005 and 2008 deaths caused by distracted driving rose by 28%.

·         This is despite 35 states having restricted in some way calling and texting while driving.

·         About 20% of all drivers, and 50% of drivers aged 21-24, report texting or talking while driving.

·         At least 1 in 100 cars are driven by persons texting, emailing, or surfing the web.

·         And many more are talking on their phones.

People who talk and text and play games while driving think they are competent drivers able to multi-task while flying down the highway. So do drunk drivers. This is an issue that’s been going on for more than a decade, and I’m surprised it’s even still an issue. I began teaching my composition classes more than 12 years ago focusing on media and culture, and this is one of the issues we studied. The studies just emerging then clearly showed the dangers – again, not just the physical distraction but also the cognitive distraction – and those dangers have only been reinforced in study after study – and fatal accident after fatal accident – since then. After this appeal from the NTSB, if there isn’t a national ban on all phone (and digital) use while driving passed in the next year, then there is only one word to describe it – shame.