Dying to text? Despite New Jersey's tough ban, drivers continue to tempt fate

From My Central Jersey:

CENTRAL JERSEY — Like many drivers now, Cibely Borges was multitasking one Monday night while behind the wheel of her 1993 Nissan Altima.
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Shortly before midnight June 29, the 23-year-old Rahway woman lost control of her car. It hit a curb, cut across all lanes of traffic on Routes 1 and 9 south in Linden and jumped the low concrete median. She collided with an empty tanker truck in the far right northbound lane.

Borges became a grim lesson in an alarming and growing public safety threat.

Investigators in Linden said she was in the middle of reading a text message when the accident occurred, based on their examination of her phone and the time of the crash that killed her.

Two nights later, a popular 27-year-old teacher died in an unusual crash in North Brunswick. Police are investigating whether a text message played a role in her death.

Perhaps nothing better underscores the disconnect in people's minds between the allure of new technology and its impact on their lives than text-messaging while driving.

While more than half the young people who participated in a recent poll admit to sending messages while driving, an overwhelming majority of all drivers believe it is dangerous.

Distinct laws against text messaging while driving might seem as superfluous as, say, a law against doing cartwheels across a highway. Sensing the urgency, however, many states have expressly banned it. In most of the country, it is not illegal.

And text messaging, even where it is outlawed, is happening with an alarming increase in frequency.

According to a survey by Fairleigh Dickinson University and the state Division of Highway Traffic Safety released earlier this month, the number of New Jersey drivers who admitted sending text messages while driving rose 40 percent this year over last.

Twenty-one percent of all drivers acknowledged texting while behind the wheel, up from 15 percent last year, according to the survey.

"It's a major problem," said Gary Poedubicky, deputy director of the state's traffic safety agency. "It's distracting and it's dangerous. The message we're trying to get out there is you just have to hang up and drive."

Those with the least experience driving — who are also responsible for highest fatal crash rates — are messaging more and more.
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Nearly 60 percent of drivers under the age of 30 who took part in the FDU survey say they have sent a text message while driving.

All this while New Jersey has tightened its laws banning cell-phone use for drivers.

In March 2008, New Jersey was the first state to make text messaging while driving a primary offense, meaning a police officer can pull over a driver if it is observed. It's a secondary offense in most other states with texting bans. It cannot trigger a traffic stop in itself. Another primary offense must be committed for a ticket to be issued.

Twenty-three states now ban texting while driving, 10 of them just for novice drivers.

But as the FDU survey shows, the bans have not stemmed the tide of wider use. Coupled with the inherent danger, the trend worries experts.
Sizing up the risk

Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety based in Washington, D.C., said a growing body of research shows that cell-phone users are four times more likely to get in a crash than ordinary drivers.

The growth of the use of text-messaging while driving is what most concerns Ditlow.

"It's a bad problem that's getting worse," said Ditlow, who just won a battle to obtain records on driving and cell-phone risks from the federal government. "It takes your hands, eyes and your mind off the road."

Earlier this year, Janet Froetscher, president and chief executive of the National Safety Council, compared talking on cell phones to drunken driving.

Based on available research about the dangers of driving and cell-phone use in general, the toll from texting can only be worsening.

The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis estimated in 2000 that 900 people a year died in car accidents associated with cell-phone use in the United States. The number of fatalities jumped to 2,600 in 2002. Cell phone use has risen dramatically since then.
The danger and its toll

Most people consider mixing driving with texting a recipe for disaster. In the FDU survey, 86 percent of all drivers supported New Jersey's primary cell phone and texting ban.

"People are driving with their knees, texting with two hands and looking at the telephone instead of the road," said Sgt. Stephen Jones of the New Jersey State Police. "They are completely disengaged from their driving activity."
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Along with about 20 other states, New Jersey now has a check box on police accident reports to show whether the use of electronic devices caused an accident.

North Brunswick police are probing whether that's what happened when 27-year-old Christin Smith drove straight into the side of a tractor trailer when trying to get onto Route 130 early July 2.

Smith was trying to enter the southbound lanes from Renaissance Boulevard about 2:15 a.m. that Thursday when she drove her Volkswagen GTI into the truck traveling in the right lane, said Lt. Roger Reinson of the North Brunswick Police Department.

Her car ended up underneath the trailer. The fourth-grade teacher at Brooks Crossing Elementary School in South Brunswick, regarded as a gifted educator, died at the scene.

Her cell phone was found open on the floor with the battery knocked out of it. The force of the crash may well have opened the phone, but the arrival of a text message lined up with the time of the crash, Reinson said.