1946 The first mobile telephone call is made, using early radio technology.
1960s Some truckers and other professional drivers use mobile phones. AT&T reports 2,000 such customers in New York City. Those customers typically wait 30 minutes for a call to go through.
Oct. 13, 1983 A crowd gathers at Chicago’s Soldier Field to watch an Ameritech phone executive sit in a convertible and call a great-grandson of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell.
1984 The AAA auto club urges drivers to park before phoning.
1987 Michael Douglas stars as cutthroat tycoon Gordon Gekko in the movie “Wall Street,” sporting the latest corporate power symbol — a brick-size cell phone.
1985 to 1995 The number of wireless customers mushrooms, from 340,000 to 34 million. Cell sites, concentrated along highways, rise from 913 to 68,000.
1991 The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety finances research finding that drivers on phones have trouble responding to challenging situations. It’s one of the first in a slew of studies. Another finds that driving while phoning, hands-free or not, is comparable in accident potential to driving drunk.
2002 Harvard researchers estimate that drivers on phones cause 2,600 deaths annually and 570,000 accidents resulting in injuries.
2005 Federal officials compile a list of 150 scientific papers over eight years on the dangers of driver phone use, “a very consistent picture,” says government researcher Chris Monk.
2009 With the explosion in texting — one-third of teens in a survey acknowledge doing it while driving — the U.S. Transportation Department opens a “distracted driving summit,” calling for a cultural shift toward safety, to be led by banning texting while driving.
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