Cellphones: Reach Out and Crunch Somebody?

Just the other day, while they were sitting at a shopping malls's traffic light, waiting to get rolling, Sid and Julie Warshof, decided to do something they've threatened to do for weeks, count the number of people with cellphones firmly clamped to their ears (like it was home of the office), as well as counting the number of people who were texting someone else.

As they looked the reality of the situation dawned on them: it's easy to see someone talking on the phone, but much harder to see someone who may be resting a cellphone on the wheel or in the palm of a hand texting away.

So, they did the best they could in their, admittedly unscientific poll, and found that just as they suspected it is easier to see someone talking on the phone (or using an earpiece -- they are hard to miss) than it is to see someone texting, but with some patience the truth reveals itself.

In this case, it's a truth that neither Sid nor Julie wanted to see or hear. They found that of every five drivers they counted, someone was doing something with a cellphone. This about that, for a moment, the figure means that about 60 percent of all drivers are doing things with cellphones, at any given time.

National Safety Council studies and studies by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, headquarted in Washington, while not confirming the exact numbers the Warshofs claimed, have pointed out in some very scientific studies that state that using cellphones is the equivalent of about a .8 blood alcohol level for a driver. In other words, cellphone drivers and texters are the equivalents of drunks behind the wheel.

Turning to Sid, Julie said: "Look at all those idiots; don't they know they can kill someone or hurt someone seriously by not keeping their noses to the task you are called on to do in a car, truck or SUV -- drive!"

To which Sid replied, "I don't know what we can do about it, besides going to the press, but the public has to know driving a cellphoning don't mix."

Most industry experts had hoped that by now, with the novelty of the cellphone having worn off (it was a prestige thing in the late 90s), that people would go back to their normal calling patterns.
Normal patterns

Well, it looks like they have because fully 60 percent of all drivers are either calling, chewing someone out, having a meeting or doing any of the many things that you use a phone in your office to do everyday.

A few years ago, if you had wanted to conduct this type of phone conversation outside your office, you would have had to stop at the nation's large network of telephone booths, dial your customer, wife or kid and proceeded from there.

Note, you were not behind the wheel of a two-ton dealer of death, if you don't control the beast.

Until the Warshofs did their, admittedly unscientific, poll, it was hard to know just where the figures were. The national safety studies, that were only recently freed from the archives by a Freedom of Information order filed by a number of organizations that are trying to get their arms around he project.

Why would they want to put their arms around the project? Here are a couple of examples: 1. recently, when pulling out of a space in a market lot, a woman in a van, engaged in a rather animated -- one could say almost heated -- conversation with the phone at her ear, while she took her other hand off the wheel to emphasize something (we've all heard of "smart" cars but this is stretching that way too much). The only problems that this woman driver had were with the pedestrians who had the gall to get in her way and the looks she gave folks who were trying to exit the parking lot lanes to head home, well they weren't nice.

Texting is more pernicious because you would have a hard time find out if someone is texting as they drive. You'd need to move in not only several TV crews, but also get permission to record the driver.

Of course, there are those arrogant drivers out there -- you know the ones I mean; they zip through traffic at what seems to be twice the speed of sound, while, at other times they lay into their horns in traffic, as if adding to the din would help.

This is the type of driver who doesn't care who sees him/her texting so the driver will put it up at the 1200 position and and then they text madly away.

Again, the same safety studies suggest the same findings.

So what is a driver to do? He can try to pull up beside the yakking head in the other vehicle and convince the yakker he's not doing himself or those those around him any good either.

The same is true of texting. Indeed, it is unlikely that anything will happen positively until you involve your state's legislature that if you are caught driving a celling you are subject to a misdemeanor first offense that jumps up to a felony charge, rather quickly with not only loss of license as one potential, but time behind bars as a second potential.

Then maybe we can make sure that people celling people will realize that if they reach out to touch someone and there's a crash while you are texting or celling then you have to face the music. We'd also ensure that 13-year-old paperboys aren't mowed down by drivers who just want to text a message.

One last thought, there are devices known as "RF Sniffers" that can detect when a radio transmitter is being used in a vehicle and, after all, that's exactly what a cellphone is. Imagine the shock on a driver's face if, after five minutes, the vehicle just stopped and wouldn't move until the cellphone conversation was over. It would be precious.

Sources: National Safety Council
American Automobile Assn.
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety