Talking and Driving

Recently a young woman was side-swiped and killed when her car went through the stop sign at an intersection. Her passenger was seriously injured as well. The investigation was complete in as much as determining that the stop sign was ignored, a garbage truck was coming in the opposing direction, and the scematics of the accident were measured and analyzed. But it wasn't until the survivor resting in the hospital was interviewed, that it all became clear. The girl said that the last thing that she recalls before entering the intersection, is that her friend, the driver, was talking on her cell phone. She could not remember if the call ended immediately before the collision.

There is much debate these days about whether using a cell phone while you are driving, is indeed as dangerous as everyone percieves it to be. Dialing is a major distraction, and text-messaging is definately foolish when you are behind the wheel, but suppose someone pulls over to dial the number and then drives only as they are talking?

Since almost the beginning of driving automobiles there have been more distractions added to the process. The radio was the first, with tuning and volumn controls. Someone invented the push button pretuned stations, and that made things better, just in time for the 8-track tape player to be added. Now you have people peering over the dash and driving with one hand on the wheel, while rooting through a big case of tapes either on the front or back seat, and fumbling to place them in the player. About that time the radios and tape players became even more advanced and now we had equalizers and all sorts of special sound controls. Then came the cassette players, and more recently, the CD players. No matter how you slice it, you've got drivers with their eyes everywhere but on the road.

What about the fast food industry? Since drive-thru food is on practically every corner, there are countless numbers of people at any time, rummaging through bags, unwrapping sandwiches, balancing drinks and searching for straws, while eating their meals on the road in order to save time. On today's roads we know that even a split second of inattentiveness, can lead to disaster.

The smoking of cigarettes is another whole area of carelessness on the road. There is the attempting to pick the cigarette out of the pack, the rummage for the lighter or matches, and every minute or so drivers take their eyes off the road so that they can navigate the cigarette to the ashtray to flick it. Occasionally there is the accidentally dropped cigarette which leads to a few frantic swerves as the driver tries to find it and stay on the road simultaneously.

Since the beginning of automobile travel, we have taken passengers with us. We carry on conversations all the time while driving...to ride in silence would be absurd. Most of us keep our eyes on the road pretty much all of the time, but there are of course always moments when you look at your passenger during conversation. And we have all seen people who seem to never look at the road, but everywhere else during the conversation. What about families with a backseat full of screaming or arguing children? How about mothers trying to reach back and forth to hand or take things from their kids? And have you ever had an argument with a passenger while driving? What a distraction that is!

Talking on a cell phone starts to seem pretty harmless when you examine all the distractions we drive with every day. Sometimes in a quiet car with no passengers, music, food or cigarettes, our own racing or preoccupied mind is in itself a terrible distraction. Have you ever gone right through a red light or stop sign when upset? Many of us have.

We tend to have focused on the cell phone because we think we have control over it. When we see someone driving with that phone to their ear, we fill with anger, especially if that driver makes an error. We believe this is one area where we can make a law and the problem will be solved. Most of us have cell phones now, and many of us talk while driving. We wouldn't dream of outlawing eating, having our morning coffee, or smoking our cigarettes while driving. And what about a law saying you may not converse with your passengers while the vehicle is in motion?

The mix of cell phones and driving is undebatably a new and definate danger. No one would dare say it is not. But even with laws in place, cities where it is prohibited continue to see the problem. Like seatbelt laws, prohibition of cell use while driving continues to be basically a personal choice. Those who do it will continue to do so even with the risk of a fine. We are a multitasking society, and we use commute time to do our telephone business.

The girl who was recently killed in the accident should not have been driving and talking on her cell phone. We know this is true. Teenagers are simply too inexperienced with the dangers of the road, to be attempting to do several things at once, the most important of which is operating a motor vehicle. But perhaps the tragedy can shed some light on the carelessness we all display while driving. Cell phones are only one of many, many more commonly occurring distractions that we all have in our moving vehicles.