I’VE BEEN trying to decide which is a more disturbing reflection of the world in which we live:
That we would need a study to tell us that it’s really, really dangerous to read and respond to messages on a tiny little screen using itsy-bitsy little keys while navigating through city traffic or barreling down the highway at 70 mph.
Or that we would need a law to tell people not to read and respond to messages on a tiny little screen using itsy-bitsy little keys while navigating through city traffic or barreling down the highway at 70 mph.
Or that we would need the Congress to threaten to cut off funding in order to force states to prohibit people from reading and responding to messages on a tiny little screen using itsy-bitsy little keys while navigating through city traffic or barreling down the highway at 70 mph, as a handful of senators proposed the day after the texting study was released.
It certainly is not news to anyone that, as the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute reported last week, “a real key to significantly improving safety is keeping your eyes on the road.” But the study behind that painfully obvious conclusion does seem to be awakening some people to the fact that we live in a world where the younger and more irresponsible among us ignore such obvious facts (half of 16- to 24-year-olds admit to texting while driving, as do a fifth of 35- to 44-year-olds), and where legislators look the other way while they do that.
And while the study’s recommendations were about as commonsensical as you could get (people shouldn’t text while driving, the youngest and most inexperienced drivers should be prohibited from even talking on a cell phone while driving), its comparative data add some perspective that has been sorely lacking in our debate, or nondebate:
• The risk of drivers crashing or nearly crashing while texting was 23 times as high as the risk when they were paying attention to the task of driving.
• Drivers were no more likely to crash while talking on a cell phone than when they were paying attention.
• Even dialing the cell phone, which researchers found was the most dangerous part of a phone conversation, resulted in a crash risk that was a (relatively) modest 5.9 times that of attentive driving.
• Reaching for an object resulted in a crash risk that was 6.7 times that of attentive driving.
This is noteworthy because I believe that one of the big reasons lawmakers don’t want to even talk about banning texting behind the wheel — and why the rest of us aren’t demanding that they do — is grown-up angst over cell-phone bans: If we outlaw texting, we think, doesn’t that set the stage for a ban on all cell phone use? (It’s telling that the only texting ban proposed in the Legislature this year also banned talking on a cell phone while driving — playing right into our anxiety.)
The other reason for our failure to act or demand action (and I count myself among the guilty, on both counts) is the digital generation divide, which has resulted in most of the people who are in a position to make laws or influence which laws get made are not quite comprehending the revolution.
We use our Blackberries to send and receive e-mail, so we think of texting as a juvenile version of that. Parents, as one news story put it, tend to see texting as “a strange but harmless means of communication.” They don’t realize that their kids are becoming sleep-deprived zombies because they’re sending text messages at 3 in the morning. They don’t understand that the combination of texting and adolescent hormones is so addictive that, yes, even their own very responsible kids are thumbing away behind the wheel. As for those of us without kids, well, we can’t even begin to wrap our minds around the ubiquity of texting in general, let alone texting behind the wheel.
But among the youngest drivers, those who were the most dangerous even before mamma gave them cell phones, texting while driving already is commonplace. And with the volume of text messaging increasing exponentially, and another year’s worth of kids who cut their teeth on text messaging climbing behind the wheel every year, it’s only a matter of time before not texting on the interstate is the exception.
As the first large-scale study of actual drivers actually driving reminds us, there is no comparison between the danger of texting and talking. Not that we needed any proof that there’s a universe of difference between an activity that might cause your mind to wander and one that requires you to take your eyes off the road for extended periods of time — an average of five seconds in the study.
That’s not to say talking on the phone while driving is safe. We can, and should, keep debating its propriety. We can debate whether it’s fair to gather collision data on that without also gathering data on drivers who are talking to a passenger or calming a screaming baby or fiddling with the CD player or applying mascara or eating a sloppy burger or drinking hot coffee or shaving or doing whatever else it is that drivers are doing on the morning commute. And I hope we will find the right answers.
But we don’t need to wait for the Congress to force us to ban texting (or sending e-mails) while driving, the way it has had to force us to institute nearly every significant highway safety law we’ve ever passed. We need to set aside our cell phone anxiety, wake up to the bizarro world we live in, and outlaw typing while driving.
Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.
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