Car Phones: Hiding the Facts
By Jeffrey Page
In another display of official lunacy, the government (a) decided to conduct a study of telephoning while driving, evidently ignoring the fact that such studies have been going on elsewhere for more than 15 years, (b) discovered that – duh! – it’s not safe to yak on the phone while cruising to work, and, fearful of antagonizing Congress, (c) squelched its own findings.
In other words, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration came through in the clutch six years ago and reached a conclusion that was a surprise to absolutely no one and then pretended it did no such thing.
DWP – driving while phoning – is dangerous?
–You knew it and I knew it because we have, any number of times, observed the idiotic driving of people dialing ahead for a pepperoni pizza or making other very important calls. They veer from lane to lane. Often they seem incapable of comprehending that most uncomplicated expression, NO TURN ON RED. And they go when they should stop and stop when they should go.
–We knew it because there are certain truths in life – even if we can’t explain how we know them. Call it common sense or intuition: We know that if we don’t concentrate on controlling our 4,000-pound vehicles we could be killed. We know this the same way we know not to swim when we see dorsal fins and not to eat wild mushrooms unless we’re in the company of a world class mycologist.
–Oh, and of course let’s not forget that the danger of carrying on a phone conversation while tooling along, say, Route 17, isn’t exactly news.
In fact, the New England Journal of Medicine published a Canadian study showing that a driver talking on a cell phone was as likely to be in a crash as someone who was legally drunk. To state the danger quantitatively, researchers found that using a cell phone in the car quadrupled the chance of a crash.
The Canadians even found that the chances of an accident are not reduced when the driver uses a hands-free phone to order that pizza. It’s not the dialing necessarily, and it’s not the grasping of the phone necessarily that are so dangerous. It’s the very act of talking with someone who isn’t there.
That was published in 1997.
Other studies with nearly identical findings have preceded the outright bans of driving while phoning in Switzerland, Israel, Brazil and several other nations. All were noted in the American press.
If there’s anyone who still refuses to make the connection between driver-phoning and crashes, note The New York Times’s recent report that NHTSA’s 2003 findings – the ones that were nearly lost to the ages – estimated that 955 people were killed in nearly a quarter million phone-related accidents in 2002 alone.
The dangers of driver-phoning are known to all sensible people. What’s breathtaking is that NHTSA, an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation, tried to hide its own report, a report that states the obvious. Congress was dead set against the agency dealing directly with the states on this matter of auto safety, even though auto safety is NHTSA’s mission.
To oppose Congress on this could have jeopardized the agency’s funding.
NHTSA’s finding might have remained locked forever in a file cabinet in Washington except that the Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen got hold of it through the Freedom of Information act and turned a copy over to The Times.
Now the information is out there – as if you didn’t know it.
But the question remains: Why would Congress object to NHTSA’s dealing with its counterpart agencies in the 50 states? Forgetting for a moment that studies have continually shown the danger of driver-phoning, wouldn’t it make perfect sense for NHTSA and state transportation departments to remain in contact on such a crucial and widespread problem?
Cynics might wonder if the powerful telecommunications lobby had a role in Congress’ decision to put NHTSA’s findings on ice.
Jeffrey can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com
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