Cellphones and Driving - like Alcohol - Just Don't Mix

When you are the passenger in a car, the world looks much different to you. For one thing, you can take the time to look at the drivers around you and see what they are doing and, for another, you can see all of the nice views that you miss while you are driving.

During a recent trip, though, there was another mission; it was to see just how many people were using their cellphones or texting while driving. This is something you normally wouldn't be able to notice if you were concentrating on the road, but, if you are in the right seat, you can take a closer look. And, while this is an admittedly non-scientific survey, the day in the passenger seat showed that roughly three of five drivers on the roads traveled were on their cellphones and there were at least two texting while driving.

This information came from direct observation. It is not the first time that there has been the occasion to do this, as well, as there is only one family car and sometimes the other driver in the family does want to drive to keep her skills sharp. (She's an excellent driver so I don't mind, in the least!!)

It does give me the chance to take out one of my small notebooks and jot down some notes about cell use. For instance, as we pulled into the parking lot of a market near our home, we saw a woman engaged in a pretty heavy conversation (from the look of the arm-waving) with little regard for the pedestrians who were scurrying out of her way. Of course, there's no law against this type of cell usage around our home, so the driver was perfectly within her rights to have whatever conversation she wanted, but, as I looked she certainly wasn't concentrating on people she could have run over; cars she could have struck, or buildings she might have hit. The object of her attention was the cellphone glued, it seemed to her left ear.

This type of usage mirrors findings that were suppressed from public view by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and which were brought to light by a recent Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the Center for Auto Safety, headed by Clarence Ditlow, and Public Citizen, a pubic rights lobbying group.

The information brought to light information was gathered by NHTSA researchers through 2002. The agency management suppressed it because they were fearful they would anger powerful congressmen who controlled their budget.

The suit also brought to light another interesting fact: that since 2000, there have been 150 studies conducted on the safety of cell use while driving. The studies all show the same thing - cellphone use and driving do not mix. The agency, in defending against the FOI suit, claimed that it made all of the information pubic, but the Center for Auto Safety (CAS) and Public Citizen (PC), found that the information released by the federal safety agency was little more than one-page executive summaries with very little detail.

The most important fact that NHTSA suppressed, according to the FOI suit, was the finding that using a cellphone while driving is the equivalent of drunk-driving. Or, to put it in perspective, a blood alcohol level of .08 is presumed, under most state statutes, to make you a drunk-driver. It is, as lawyers say, prima fascia proof of guilt.

Further, the FOI suit brought to light another, even more startling development, hands-free phone devices, such as headsets, are not safe. The agency found, the FOI suit notes, that you are four times more likely to have an accident, even using a hands-free device, such as a Bluetooth earphone/headset.

To put it another way, experts note, that drivers who are phoning - whether they are using hands-free devices or not - are four times as likely to have accidents than those who are not on the phone. The same body of research notes that using a cellphone is the equivalent of having a blood alcohol level of .08, a level, in most states, presumes you are drunk-driving.

The same research also found that even using hands-free devices is no free pass. The odds are the same, the FOI suit notes. This means that the Bluetooth device you have clamped to your ear, blinking away, is no guarantee that you are safer. The NHTSA research shows you are not.

Getting this information to the public has been a long battle for CSA and PC. They filed their first FOI lawsuit about six years ago and they doggedly kept after the information.

The former administration consciously suppressed this information, according to the FOI suit, because they were fearful they would anger lawmakers in Congress. NHTSA's primary mission would only be safety research and they would abandon any lobbying efforts regarding cellphone use.

Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety, told NYTimes.com: "We're looking at a problem that could be as bad as drunk driving" and the government has covered it up.

This information only came to light recently as the result of a Freedom of Information Suit filed by The Center For Auto Safety and Public Citizen. The information was buried because a former head of the federal agency was worried they would antagonize the Congressmen who controlled the purse strings, the House Appropriations Committee. The safety agency, NYTimes.com noted, was to have one narrow function, safety research.

The result of keeping this information suppressed has been tragic. In 2002, NHTSA estimated that yearly cellphone usage added 995 highway fatalities to the numbers of drivers killed in highway accidents. It also estimated that it added another 240,000 crashes to the yearly statistics.

Extrapolating this information to 2009, and you are looking at about 7,000 additional fatalities and another 1.7 million accidents to the rolls.

This is a provable statistic. It can be shown by two recent Boston incidents. In the first, last winter, a young man was texting a message and failed to see a 13-year-old pedaling his bike along a snow-clogged roadway. The result was the youngster, a newspaperboy, was killed. In the second incident - this one involving a light-rail vehicle operator who was violating the Boston transit authority's rules - was texting a message and failed to see the yellow warning light and red stop light and the result was that his multi-car light-rail vehicle rear-ended another that was parked in a station and there were more than a dozen injuries. The operator has lost his position and is also facing at least two suits from victims of the accident.

This accident supports the finding of a study just released by the University of VA. In this study, UVA researchers studied 900 truckers closely. They found that truckers who texted while operating were 23 times more likely to have a serious accident than those truckers who did not.

Here's an interesting side note that speaks to the NHTSA actions of the time. UVA researchers wanted to conduct an ambitious 10,000-driver video study where video cameras would be installed and would look over the shoulders of the drivers whether they talked or texted. NHTSA shot down that idea, but did let the researchers have a 100-vehicle study. Even the 100-car study proved that cellphone usage, while driving, is dangerous. NHTSA also suppressed this data and it took the FOI suit to bring it to light.