Driving Distractions

Drivers who are using cell phones are more likely to be in accidents. Bigger dangers, however, come from fiddling with radios, talking with other people in the car and watching what’s going on outside your car. So, while the intent of LD 525, which would ban most uses of handheld cell phones while driving, is good, it can’t solve the underlying problem of people driving while they are distracted.

A recent study by the University of North Carolina found that driver distraction was a major cause of traffic accidents. However, cell phone use only contributed to 2.5 percent of such crashes. The primary distractions were people, objects and events outside the car (29 percent), audio equipment (11 percent) and other occupants in the vehicle (11 percent).

A survey by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, released this week, found that 8 percent of drivers, or 1.2 million people, were using cell phones during daylight hours last year, a 50 percent increase since 2002 and a 100 percent rise in four years. Presumably as the number of drivers talking on their phones increases so will the number of accidents attributed to this behavior.

For all the concern about talking and driving, cell phones have made the state’s highways safer, according to Steve McCausland, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety. Drivers with cell phones can quickly alert police to erratic drivers, accidents and other problems on the road.

In addition, cell phones are becoming increasingly important for business people, especially those who travel a lot. Banning their use altogether while driving would harm genuine business needs. LD 525 partly addresses this concern by allowing physicians, commercial license holders, public works and Department of Transportation personnel and emergency workers to use handheld phones while on the job. Others would be required to use hands-free devices if they wanted to use their phone while driving.

A former proponent of cell phone bans offers an interesting perspective. Three years ago, Michael Trujillo, the former vice chairman of the Sante Fe, N.M., Public Safety Committee, pushed the city to adopt a ban on handheld cell phones while driving. Now he is opposed to such laws because freeing up a driver’s hands worsens the distraction problem by allowing him to turn his attention to other tasks, such as sending a text message on a handheld device or going through a play list on an iPod. “If you have hands free, not only are you able to do something else, but you are able to do three different tasks at the same time,” Mr. Trujillo told The New York Times.

This is a situation that state laws cannot fix. When you are driving, you should focus on driving, not a cell phone, your backseat passengers or your lunch.