Total Cell Phone Ban While Driving?

[fourstringdrums]

I'm for banning texting, emailing, and phone conversations without bluetooth -- anything that requires that you not have both hands on the wheel or that you have to look at your phone. But a ban of even hands free calls is a bit excessive. Not only is it an issue of realistic convenience but I don't see a phone call being any more distracting than talking to the person in the seat next to you.

WASHINGTON -- Texting, emailing or chatting on a cellphone while driving is simply too dangerous to be allowed, federal safety investigators declared Tuesday, urging all states to impose total bans except for emergencies.
Inspired by recent deadly crashes -- including one in which a teenager sent or received 11 text messages in 11 minutes before an accident -- the recommendation would apply even to hands-free devices, a much stricter rule than any current state law.
The unanimous recommendation by the five-member National Transportation Safety Board would make an exception for devices deemed to aid driver safety such as GPS navigation systems.
A group representing state highway safety offices called the recommendation "a game-changer."
"States aren't ready to support a total ban yet, but this may start the discussion," Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association, said.
NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman acknowledged the recommendation would be unpopular with many people and that complying would involve changing what has become ingrained behavior for many Americans.
While the NTSB doesn't have the power to impose restrictions, its recommendations carry significant weight with federal regulators and congressional and state lawmakers. Another recommendation issued Tuesday urges states to aggressively enforce current bans on text messaging and the use of cellphones and other portable electronic devices while driving.
"We're not here to win a popularity contest," she said. "No email, no text, no update, no call is worth a human life."
Currently, 35 states and the District of Columbia ban texting while driving, while nine states and D.C. bar hand-held cellphone use. Thirty states ban all cellphone use for beginning drivers. But enforcement is generally not a high priority, and no states ban the use of hands-free devices for all drivers.
A total cellphone ban would be the hardest to accept for many people.
Leila Noelliste, 26, a Chicago blogger and business owner, said being able to talk on the cellphone "when I'm running around town" is important to self-employed people like herself.
"I don't think they should ban cellphones because I don't think you're really distracted when you're talking, it's when you're texting," she said. When you're driving and talking, "your eyes are still on the road."
The immediate impetus for the recommendation of state bans was a deadly highway pileup near Gray Summit, Mo., last year in which a 19-year-old pickup driver sent and received 11 texts in 11 minutes just before the accident.
NTSB investigators said they are seeing increasing texting, cellphone calls and other distracting behavior by drivers in accidents involving all kinds of transportation. It has become routine to immediately request the preservation of cellphone and texting records when an investigation is begun.
In the past few years the board has investigated a train collision in which the engineer was texting that killed 25 people in Chatsworth, Calif.; a fatal accident on the Delaware River near Philadelphia in which a tugboat pilot was talking on his cellphone and using a laptop computer, and a Northwest Airlines flight that sped more than 100 miles past its destination because both pilots were working on their laptops.
Last year, a driver was dialing his cellphone when his truck crossed a highway median near Munfordville, Ky., and collided with a 15-passenger van. Eleven people were killed.
The board said the initial collision in the Missouri accident was caused by the inattention of the pickup driver who was texting a friend about events of the previous night. The pickup, traveling at 55 mph, hit the back of a tractor truck that had slowed for highway construction. The pickup was rear-ended by a school bus that overrode the smaller vehicle. A second school bus rammed into the back of the first bus.
The pickup driver and a 15-year-old student on one of the buses were killed. Thirty-eight other people were injured. About 50 students, mostly members of a high school band from St. James, Mo., were on the buses heading to the Six Flags St. Louis amusement park.
Missouri had a law banning drivers under 21 years old from texting while driving at the time of the crash, but wasn't aggressively enforcing the ban, board member Robert Sumwalt said.
"Without the enforcement, the laws don't mean a whole lot," he said.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported earlier this year that pilot projects in Syracuse, N.Y., and Hartford, Conn., produced significant reductions in distracted driving by combining stepped-up ticketing with high-profile public education campaigns.
Before and after each enforcement wave, NHTSA researchers observed cellphone use by drivers and conducted surveys at drivers' license offices in the two cities. They found that in Syracuse, hand-held cellphone use and texting declined by a third. In Hartford, there was a 57 percent drop in hand-held phone use, and texting behind the wheel dropped by nearly three-quarters.
However, that was with blanket enforcement by police.
The board's decision to include hands-free cellphone use in its recommendation is likely to prove especially controversial. No states currently ban hand-free use although many studies show that it is often as unsafe as hand-held phone use because drivers' minds are on their conversations rather than what's happening on the road.
Hersman pointed to an Alexandria, Va., accident the board investigated in which a bus driver talking on a hands-free phone ran into a bridge despite his being familiar with the route and the presence of warning signs that the arch was too low for his bus to clear. The roof of the bus was sheared off.
The board has previously recommended bans on texting and cellphone use by commercial truck and bus drivers and beginning drivers, but it had stopped short of calling for a ban on the use of the devices by adults behind the wheel of passenger cars.
The problem of texting while driving is getting worse despite a rush by states to ban the practice, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said last week. In November, Pennsylvania became the 35th state to forbid texting while driving.
About two out of 10 American drivers overall -- and half of drivers between 21 and 24 -- say they've thumbed messages or emailed from the driver's seat, according to a survey of more than 6,000 drivers by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
However, the survey found that many drivers don't think it's dangerous when they do it -- only when others do.
At any given moment last year on America's streets and highways, nearly one in every 100 car drivers was texting, emailing, surfing the Web or otherwise using a hand-held electronic device, the safety administration said. Those activities were up 50 percent over the previous year.
Driver distraction wasn't the only significant safety problem uncovered by NTSB's investigation of the Missouri accident. Investigators said they believe the pickup driver was suffering from fatigue that may have eroded his judgment. He had an average of about five-and-a-half hours of sleep a night in the days leading up to the accident and had had fewer than five hours of sleep the night before the accident, they said.
The pickup driver had no history of accidents or traffic violations, investigators said.
Investigators also found significant problems with the brakes of both school buses involved in the accident. A third school bus sent to a hospital after the accident to pick up students crashed in the hospital parking lot when that bus' brakes failed.
However, the brake problems didn't cause or contribute to the severity of the accident, investigators said.
Another issue involved the difficulty passengers had getting out of the first school bus after the accident. Its doors were unusable and passengers had to exit through an emergency window. The raised latch on the window kept catching on clothing as students tried to escape, investigators said. Escape was further slowed because the window design required one person to hold the window up in order for a second person to crawl through, they said.
It was critical for passengers to leave as quickly as possible because a large amount of fuel underneath the bus was a serious fire hazard, investigators said.
"It could have been a much worse situation if there was a fire," Donald Karol, the NTSB's highway safety director, said.

Read more: No cellphones, no texting by drivers, US urges - 7NEWS Boston News WHDH-TV 7NEWS WHDH.COM

[armywalaby]

It's about time. The city ordinance here is that it is ok as long as you are 21 or older....ridiculous.

Will also force cell phone manufacturers to come together on a consistent data port; I don't see Verizon or AT&T selling specific rights to a car company...so that could be beneficial in the long run, you know, you're at a friends w/o your charger and you're phone is dying, "but dude, it's all the same now".

Like I said, it is about time.

[jmattbassplaya]

I could get behind banning texting, but I couldn't get behind talking on the phone (especially if it's hands free). Don't tell anyone, but music is much more distracting for me than talking to someone on the phone

[Jinro]

As long as I can still use my iPod instead of listening to the crap local stations, I really don't care. People around here seem to think that 4-way stops are rocket science, and it gets even worse when everyone at the stop is yakking on their phone.

[sonic assassin]

saw this on the news. they said ALL electronic devices unless its an emergency. there are a couple inherent issues there. what constitutes an emergency is a little subjective. and are we outlawing radios and GPS units as well? they are as distracting as they are helpful. my phone is both my GPS and my radio. often concerned with getting pulled over for having my phone in my lap playing music (car is old, radio is dead). hard to explain to a hillbilly cop that i was using it for its mp3 playback capabilities.

either way, its all distracting. one civilian testimony stated "well, we'd better get rid of passengers. they are just as distracting as a phone." agreed.

this is coming from someone who can text with one hand without looking and drive with the other. the issue isnt people distracted by technology, its stupid people/bad drivers being distracted PERIOD. if you cant hold a phone to your ear and drive, you shouldnt try. some of us are capable of doing many things at once.

all this is brought up because someone was answering a message and caused a bus crash that i imagine took the lives of some children. while this is unfortunate, its not the phone's fault. its user error.

[Kwesi]

Originally Posted by armywalaby

It's about time. The city ordinance here is that it is ok as long as you are 21 or older....ridiculous.

Will also force cell phone manufacturers to come together on a consistent data port; I don't see Verizon or AT&T selling specific rights to a car company...so that could be beneficial in the long run, you know, you're at a friends w/o your charger and you're phone is dying, "but dude, it's all the same now".

Like I said, it is about time.

Not sure if I'm reading this right but USB micro-B connectors ARE the current standard cell phone data/charge port. I can charge my phone damn near anywhere now.

'bout time, indeed .

[armywalaby]

Originally Posted by Kwesi

Not sure if I'm reading this right but USB micro-B connectors ARE the current standard cell phone data/charge port. I can charge my phone damn near anywhere now.

'bout time, indeed .

Glad to hear it. I wouldn't know. I got rid of my iPhone last year. Best decision I ever made.

[Selta]

I'm kind of split on the issue. I'm going to mostly narrow in on texting/e-mailing while driving. Being of a younger type, I like to think that I would be able to text while driving. However, I make it a point to not text at all and to not talk on my phone (without my handsfree) while I'm driving. I'm a "two hands on the wheel" kinda driver. I've been riding with enough people who would be texting while driving, and invariably they take their eyes off of the road to read the message they just got. Then the engineer type in me takes over... at 60mph, you're moving at 88 feet every second. That's fast. Even if it takes you only two seconds to read the text message, you've traveled a long way down the road. I really don't think that should be considered acceptable.
Talking while driving, if hands free, I think could be acceptable. I, like you, draw a parallel to having a passenger that you're conversing with.
It's an interesting thing to think about though - should they pass new laws concerning cell phone use while driving? If so, what about GPS units, the radio, or any other "device" that are factory equipped? I do think that cell phones are taking a hard rep, as it's easy to point to the cell phone being the point of distraction causing whatever incident. I, however, am not so sure that that "hard rep" is undeserved.

[Kwesi]

Originally Posted by armywalaby

Glad to hear it. I wouldn't know. I got rid of my iPhone last year. Best decision I ever made.

Well, Apple is Apple. They like proprietary... well... everything, haha. Android and most other phones out there now use USB. Veering off topic even more, mind if I ask why you were so happy to dump your iPhone? Personally, after being on Android for nearly a year I'm really digging it so I don't think I could make the switch myself.

[pacojas]

just another way to ring the cash register, IMO. as with all laws,.. it's only a violation if i get caught. just like speeding... i do it every single day and get caught every 5-10 years, so,... i don't care. i will calculate the damage & threat potential and when the coast is clear enough,.. execute communication protocol as necessary.

there's a court case pending because a driver was ticketed for reading a text at a red light. he's sueing to have the law modified which seems reasonable to me. lives and livelyhoods are at stake here. people will not compromise there convenience willfully!

[Jinro]

I wish I had your luck. I see people speeding, tailgating, and weaving in and out of traffic without using a turn signal, and there's never a cop around. As soon as I get 10 over, there's always a cop waiting for me.

[lowfreq33]

If it weren't for the danger to other drivers I'd say just allow natural selection to take its course.

[NOT]

Sounds reasonable. If it prevents harm, give it a try.

I am soon getting my permit, and being that I am new to driving, I can't imagine using a phone while behind the wheel.

[Simo98]

Originally Posted by sonic assassin

this is coming from someone who can text with one hand without looking and drive with the other. the issue isnt people distracted by technology, its stupid people/bad drivers being distracted PERIOD. if you cant hold a phone to your ear and drive, you shouldnt try. some of us are capable of doing many things at once.

This.

The problem is not phones being used in cars, the problem is phones being used in cars by stupid people. I am quite capable of talking on the phone while I drive on the open road, just the same as I can change CD, or eat a sandwich. If I am in traffic, I'll hang up, if something on the road were to crop up which required my immediate attention, I'd chuck the phone in my lap and put both hands on the wheel. I don't text while I drive because I don't believe I am able to do so safely, and I'd rather not crash and die, however plenty of people are able to, and I think they should be allowed to.

Unfortunately, cars are just as capable (generally more so) of severely injuring pedestrians as much as they are their drivers, so we can't just let people do it at their own risk

I say ban cars.

[sonic assassin]

Originally Posted by Simo98

or eat a sandwich.

thought i was the only one...

[ColinB]

There's been a ban on mobile phone use in cars (except for hands free) in the UK for many years now - but you wouldn't know it. I always see at least one person using their phone on my 4 mile drive into town... and remember, most cars in the UK have manual gear-shift so that makes for added chaos.

[bassybill]

I had an incident a while back where I had to pull up unexpectedly. As I came to a halt, I looked in my rear view mirror to see the driver of the vehicle behind with their head turned ninety degrees, having a face-to-face conversation with their passenger. Fortuately, they noticed I'd stopped in the very nick of time and screeched to a halt with a look of sheer panic on their face. So, yeah, I understand that passengers can be a distraction.

On topic, I think it's likely that hands free operation of a phone is no more of a distraction than a passenger, maybe even less (see above). But anyone who thinks they can drive with a phone held to their ear (or, even worse, in their hand whilst texting) without posing a greater risk to other people than they do with their hands free is simply deluded. With a phone in your hand, you have less control over the vehicle than you do without. It's that simple and in an emergency that could be the causal factor in a fatality. To believe otherwise is kind of like believing you're fine after a few beers because you feel sober - that's not only stupid, it's also totally selfish and irresponsible.

[naetog]

I'm all for the ban.

Enforcing it will be interesting.

[Simo98]

Originally Posted by bassybill

But anyone who thinks they can drive with a phone held to their ear (or, even worse, in their hand whilst texting) without posing a greater risk to other people than they do with their hands free is simply deluded. With a phone in your hand, you have less control over the vehicle than you do without. It's that simple and in an emergency that could be the causal factor in a fatality.

In any situation where I would be talking on the phone while driving, the fraction of a second it would take me to drop the phone and put both hands on the wheel would be so insignificant that I really don't think it would make a difference. Sure, one in a million times it could make the difference between life and death, but I really doubt it.

Of course, I would only ever talk on the phone while driving when I am in a position that I feel I can safely do so, generally on an open road. The main reason I'd be liable to have an accident is that I'd be spending too much time keeping a look out for the police and not enough time looking at the road.

I mean, realistically, driving a manual car requires that you take one hand off the wheel, and even more so it requires that you do it in a traffic situation. If I can safely drive with one hand, in traffic, whilst taking to someone in the passengers seat, why can't I drive safely with one hand on the open road talking to someone over the phone? Sure, it's not exactly the same, however the fraction of a second it takes me to move my hand from the gearstick back onto the wheel is just as dangerous as the fraction of a second it takes me to drop a mobile phone and grab the wheel in my opinion, and that is a necessary part of driving. Should manual cars be illegal?

What's next, not allowed to eat or drink while driving? (actually, I think that already exists here ) Not allowed to change radio station while driving? Not allowed to turn on the Air Conditioner while driving?

I agree, they are all slightly more dangerous that driving with two hands on the wheel all the time, but are they really that more dangerous? How often do they make a difference? Not only that, but is the legality going to make any difference? I'd assume the kind of people who are going to talk on the phone in situations where it is beyond their driving ability to do so, would also be the sort of people who would do it whether it is legal or not, thus leaving all the sensible people who would use their phone while driving in a responsible manner penalised, and all the irresponsible people doing it anyway and causing just as many accidents.

[i_got_a_mohawk]

I agree with these kind of laws, well, as they are in the UK anyway.

Hands free kits cost peanuts.