Distracted driving gets attention

Any fancy new cell phone that was left in a stocking on Christmas should have come with a warning attached — signed by Santa, your parents, your spouse, the Legislature, Congress, the auto club, the wireless industry, software vendors and any number of other players.

“No texting while driving.”

Or maybe, “Both hands on wheel while using phone.”

Or even, “Don't use this phone while driving. Period.”

If 2009 was the year that “distracted driving” joined our vocabulary, then 2010 could be the year that more aggressive steps — new legislation, new ad crusades, new levels of social disapproval — are taken to combat it. Action isn't certain, especially considering how ingrained people's phone habits have become in two decades and the lure of a new generation of phones with potentially more driver distractions.

But, like an impossible-to-ignore ringtone, signs indicate that the issue is coming to a head:

-- Nebraska and Iowa, like many other states, are likely to consider legislation to ban all texting while driving and perhaps further restrict phone use.

-- Congress has begun work on several bills that would prod states to forbid texting while driving. The topic got a high-profile hearing this fall, and President Barack Obama, after convening a “summit” to dramatize the problem, ordered federal employees to set an example.

-- The AAA auto club has begun a lobbying crusade to get all states to ban texting while driving by 2013.

-- CTIA, the wireless industry's lobbying arm, has shifted its stance to support bans on texting while driving. Otherwise it urges education — such as the “on the road, off the phone” ad campaign it helped launch this fall — and emerging phone technologies as the best solutions.

-- Software vendors — even as they design interactive maps and other applications for motorists — are also touting programs that can turn newer-generation phones into personal secretaries, capable of reading your incoming texts aloud and politely telling callers that, sorry, you can't respond right now because you're driving.

-- Numerous safety groups, local governments, business associations and individual firms are preaching sermons on what not to do behind the wheel, partly for fear of being sued in distracted-driving accidents. Chicago, for example, fired 10 city bus drivers and suspended 13 others in the first four months of a new no-phoning-on-duty policy — and passengers are encouraged to report violators.

-- Parents, parental groups and driving teachers are aiming appeals and threats at teens, who are considered a prime audience for the message because of their driving inexperience and love of phone use.

-- Even dictionary editors have climbed aboard. Webster's New World chose “distracted driving” as its Word of the Year for 2009, defining it as “use of a cell phone or other portable electronic device while operating a motor vehicle.”

The risks of multitasking while motoring were known long before cell phones became common, yet the wireless industry grew up in the automobile. It built itself into a $150 billion business in the United States mostly by winning over a key customer: the driver.

In fact, the devices originally were dubbed car phones and were extolled as indispensable for the busy executive.

One 1984 ad, depicting an executive behind the wheel, asked: “Can your secretary take dictation at 55 mph?” Another company in the late '80s even marketed a faux device, the “Cellular Phoney,” selling tens of thousands of the replicas for $16 apiece to motorists who wanted the status symbol but couldn't afford the real thing.

“That was the business,” Kevin Roe, a telecommunications industry analyst, told the New York Times in a recent article tracing the industry's history. Wireless companies, he said, “designed everything to keep people talking in their cars.”

The federal government estimated that, as of two years ago, 11 percent of drivers were on the phone at any given moment. At the same time, evidence of the human cost has been rising.

Last summer, two consumer groups revealed government documents that said researchers at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had estimated that, in 2002, phone use by drivers caused 240,000 accidents and 955 deaths. Alarmed at that preliminary data, they called for a large, long-term study to better gauge the risk.

But the head of the NHTSA declined, saying later that Congress members had warned his federal agency to keep the data secret and avoid action that could be perceived as lobbying.

Critics look back on the episode as a missed opportunity, a failure to dig deeper that has cost lives and allowed a culture of behind-the-wheel multitasking to blossom.

The toll is hard to pinpoint, officials say, because not all states gather data on phone-related crashes and because doing so is difficult. Drivers don't want to admit that they were on the phone, and investigating officers must be trained to look for the signs.

Even so, the deaths and a growing number of studies — one suggests that a driver talking on even a hands-free phone is four times more likely to have a crash — are winning more lawmakers to the idea that something should be done.

In Washington, two bills in the Senate and one in the House target the practice that seems riskiest: texting while driving. One bill would offer grants to states that adopt bans — a carrot approach. The others would wave a stick: Impose a ban or lose highway funds — the method used to persuade states to adopt the uniform drunken-driving standard of .08 percent blood alcohol.

None of the bills has advanced from committee.

Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., a member of one of the committees, opposes the stick approach and favors letting each state devise its own solution.

“Having been a governor, I think that states do come up with some good ideas,” he said.

“I don't think you're going to see a mandate” from Congress, although state legislatures should be mindful that the broad problem of distracted driving has acquired political momentum, Johanns said. “We've all pulled up to the stop sign and seen the other driver handling a Big Mac and fries.”

In Nebraska, State Sen. John Harms of Scottsbluff is drafting a bill to expand the state's texting ban for drivers under 18 to all drivers, planning to introduce it when the Legislature convenes next month. Public resistance is too great to go further, such as outlawing handheld phones behind the wheel, he said.

“You've got to take a small bite at a time,” he said.

In Iowa, the Transportation Committee chairmen in both chambers of the Legislature, Sen. Tom Rielly of Oskaloosa and Rep. Dave Tjepkes of Gowrie, said they will address distracted driving — particularly texting — next session.

Nineteen states now prohibit all drivers from texting. Nine, including Nebraska, prohibit novice drivers from doing so, according to the Governors Highway Safety Administration.

“It's becoming a hot-button issue,” said CTIA spokesman John Walls, who said that even his fractious industry group of rival wireless manufacturers, carriers and software developers has thrown its weight behind texting bans. Some highly publicized wrecks and individual experience — people who “have an oops moment” and scare themselves — are adding to the momentum, he said.

Whether laws should go further — six states now ban drivers from using phones altogether, and 21 states, including Nebraska, ban novice drivers from phone use — should depend on accident data, he said.

Walls said CTIA, criticized in the past for touting hands-free phones as a safe alternative, now favors a broad legislative approach against distracted driving, similar to laws against careless or reckless driving, rather than piecemeal bans on individual phone practices.

“Nobody accurately predicted the popularity of text messaging, in or out of a car,” he said. Narrow bans can't foresee emerging technologies and might inadvertently squelch helpful ones, he said.

Only Maine and New Hampshire simply forbid all driving while distracted. Utah treats phone use as part of its careless-driving law.

Persuading teens, who especially have embraced texting, to put down the phone while driving is a challenge.

“Sometimes it's hard to convince young people,” said Pat Venditte, founder of Omaha's Cornhusker Driving School.

He said his classes teach that driving should occupy “110 percent total concentration” — but those lessons are often undercut by the example of Mom or Dad driving away, phone in hand.

Meanwhile, though, exotic new techno-baubles beckon to motorists.

Sprint recently showed a TV ad for a wireless service that lets people in moving cars connect to the Internet not just with phones but also their computers. “Right now,” the announcer says, “five co-workers are working from the road using a ‘Mi-Fi,' a mobile hot spot.”

The scene shows five people in the car.

Despite the announcer's words, the company says, “throughout this television commercial, the driver has both hands on the wheel. He is not engaging in any unsafe behavior and is focused on driving.”

Steve Largent, the head of CTIA, recently conceded that the wireless industry's past education efforts have fallen short compared with its product promotions.

“This industry continues to evolve,” he said. “We think it's evolving in the right direction. The bottom line is safety. That's our position.”

This report includes material from the New York Times.

Contact the writer:

444-1140, roger.buddenberg@owh.com

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