Lawmakers Propose Curbs on Cell Calling When Driving
He’s a menace on the road, cradling his portable phone, yakking away, all while tending the steering wheel and the stick shift.
You’ve seen him. Your legislators have seen him too.
Now some lawmakers want him off the road, or at least off the phone. And that has some in the wireless telecom industry feeling uncomfortable.
People used to complain about bicyclists without helmets, observed Jim Bolen, a community relations officer with the San Diego Police Department’s Traffic Division.
Cell-phone use behind the wheel is “now the ‘in’ thing to complain about,” he said.
Such complaints now come from lawmakers’ offices, at various levels of government.
In late May, Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., and Sen. John Corzine, D-N.J., introduced federal legislation that would ban people from using cell phones while driving.
– Drivers Could Use Headsets
If approved in its current state, Ackerman’s Call Responsibility and Stay Healthy Act (abbreviated as CRASH) would let callers use headsets, speaker phones and voice-activated dialing. It would also allow people to make emergency calls from behind the wheel.
Corzine’s bill would leave decisions about permitting such “hands-free” devices up to state legislatures. In a prepared statement, Corzine called the measure a way to make roads safer.
The proposed laws would work by cutting federal highway funds to states that don’t enact the ban.
In California, Assemblyman Joseph Simitian, D-Palo Alto, introduced Assembly Bill 911 in February to limit drivers from using handsets. Though the legislator canceled a committee hearing on the measure last month, one person familiar with the legislation said it could be reintroduced in next year’s session.
Some 35 states are working on legislation regarding distracted driving, said Michael Bagley, director of public policy for the Western region of Verizon Wireless, a Bedminster, N.J.-based carrier that serves San Diego.
Bagley said Verizon supported Simitian’s bill. Among other things, he said, it phases in limits after three years, letting people cycle out of their existing wireless contracts. The bill also makes exceptions for emergency calls, sets penalties no larger than those for any other driving infraction and has language that expresses the value of wireless devices, he said.
– Uniform Laws Are Preferred
State law is probably the most appropriate way to handle the issue of calling behind the wheel, Bagley said. What Verizon does not want, he said, is laws that vary by local jurisdiction , for example, different rules for San Diego, Chula Vista and La Mesa.
Some California communities have already considered local bans, he said. Meanwhile, Suffolk County , the portion of Long Island outside New York City , is one jurisdiction that has already banned cell phone use behind the wheel.
While Verizon expresses some tolerance for cell phone laws, the cellular industry as a whole seems uncomfortable with laws to restrict drivers’ use of cell phones.
“We don’t think they’re necessary,” said Dee Yankoskie of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association in Washington, D.C.
There is no data to justify a law, she said, citing a recent study commissioned by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, and prepared by the University of North Carolina.
– Distractions On The Road
The study of 32,000 traffic accidents found 1.5 percent of drivers had been distracted by using or dialing a wireless phone.
A great majority had been distracted by other things:
o 29.4 percent had been distracted by an outside object, person or event.
o 10.9 percent had been distracted by another occupant in the vehicle.
o 1l.4 percent had been distracted by adjusting a radio, cassette or compact disc.
A California Highway Patrol spokeswoman said preliminary statistics from this state, gathered since Jan. 1, showed six out of more than 16,000 crashes recorded were related to cell phone use.
Spokeswoman Anne Da Vigo said the agency draws a distinction between primary accident factors , like driving under the influence and excess speed , and “associated factors” like distractions. The latter can be caused by children, pets, personal hygiene, eating and the use of mechanical devices.
Ten of the 16,000-plus accidents statewide were related to the radio, she added.
The tone of the statistics is not the same at Insurance Information Institute.
Officials at the New York City trade group cite their own 2000 survey, saying 87 percent of adults believe using a cell phone while behind the wheel impairs driving ability.
– Solutions May Lie In Technology
If technology is a problem, some suggest technology might be a solution.
San Diego-based Jabra Corp. is a company that manufactures headsets that plug into mobile phones. Some devices resemble a hearing aid, with a cord that connects to the wireless handset. Others come with a boom microphone.
The devices allow drivers to have both eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel, said Jennifer Cauble, vice president of marketing with Jabra. The advent of voice-activated products may let people keep their hands off the dial pad entirely, she added.
Cauble previously worked for Texas-based Bell Sports, a manufacturer of helmets. She said she sees similarities between the debate over bicycle helmets a few years ago, and today’s debate.
Both cases, she said, brought out safety studies and some disagreement. Yet in the end, she said, such debate is good because it makes people aware of their safety options.
“Just the submission of legislation into the public arena was a way to create awareness in and of itself,” she said of the helmet debate.
Cauble confirmed Jabra has considered “advertising opportunities” specific to states like New York, where laws against drivers holding handsets seem poised to pass. She declined to give specifics, and said the company has not launched any such campaign.
Safety is a central theme of Jabra’s advertising. For more than a year, the company has urged both the trade and the consumer to “Practice safe cellular.” (The slogan has a familiar ring to some because it echoes warnings about “safe sex” that have appeared in the popular media.)
Yankoskie of the wireless industry says her group members prefer education to legislation.
Educational campaigns urge people to consider whether the road is the best place to make a call and whether the call will be distracting. They urge drivers to keep calls short and use hands-free devices.
The wireless industry’s Yankoskie also argued new laws are unnecessary because law enforcement already has the tools it needs to ticket distracted drivers.
Indeed, a phone can mean the difference between a warning and a ticket, said Bolen and a couple of his partners at the San Diego Police’s Traffic Division.
Drivers who run a red light or violate some other law while talking on a cell phone shouldn’t expect a warning, they said.
Wireless phones are no different from screaming children, compact discs or any other thing that takes a driver’s attention away from the road, Bolen said.
The community would probably not see an impact from a law banning wireless phone use, he predicted.
Drivers facing a ticket would probably benefit from claiming they had an emergency phone call, he added.
“Case dismissed,” he said in the manner of a traffic court judge. “Now you’ve wasted everybody’s time.”
Even if the matter is settled to everyone’s satisfaction, the legislative controversy over cell phones in the driver’s seat may be only the warm-up for another debate.
That concerns telematics, the proposed technology that would bring Internet service to your car.
Or to a car near you.
