Cell Drivers

The cell phone carnage on the highways continue to increase in the U.S. (and almost everywhere else as well). According to a study just released by the National Safety Council, twenty eight percent of all traffic accidents in the U.S. occur when people talk on cell phones or send text messages while driving.

The vast majority of those crashes, 1.4 million annually, are caused by cell phone conversations, and 200,000 are blamed on text messaging. Kind of sad, huh? Those who chat or text when driving know they are less capable of driving safely, but the addiction of the cell phone may be as strong as the addiction to drugs. Essentially, the risk their lives and the lives of others because they are allowed to do it. Those jurisdictions that have laws banning that behavior say it is very hard to nab so many cell addicts who drive carelessly. In numbers (of abusers) there is safety from being caught chatting or texting while driving.

Take the "hands-free"cell phone or texting as examples of this enforcement problem.. Enforcement of a texting ban requires police to physically observe an act that usually is conducted in a driver's lap, and hands free devices make it possible to talk on cell phones without being observed. More than 120 studies of cell phone use suggest that using hands free devices doesn't eliminate the distraction caused by a phone conversation. It's just as bad as driving with the phone in one's hand.

The main reason people talk on their cell phones is because they can get away with it. Eventually signal blocking technology could eliminate the cell driver. But "privacy" and "constitutional rights of privacy" come into question if technology on cars that prohibits cell use while the car is in motion is implemented. The more feasible way of stopping cell driving is through education about the dangers that would make cell driving as socially unacceptable as smoking cigarettes is today.

That is a possibility. I can remember as a child when almost 80% of adults smoked cigarettes and smoking was considered "cool" and normal. Every teen went through a passage of right in which he or she was expected to smoke, just as teens today see their cell phones as the pathway to being adult. But now, the smoker is seen as a weakling to his or her craving, often is shunned and is made to feel a certain deviancy to his puffing.

It did take almost 50 years to change that attitude. I wonder how long it will be before cell abuse is also seen as socially unacceptable. A concerted media ad campaign to emphasize the dangers of driving when chatting or texting would be a first step to achieving that end. Whether the political will to enforce bans on cell phone use while driving exists is another matter. Politicians blow with the wind and right now the wind is behind the cell addicts. But once cell driving is seen by most as dangerous and senseless, the politicians should follow step and start enacting real legislation that is ardently enforced.

In the meantime, give those cell addicts plenty of room when you see them driving like the fools they are