Driving reporter demonstrates hazards of cellphone use

From Seattle Times:

By Mark Rahner

Seattle Times staff reporter

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STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

One of the participants in the demonstration of how cellphones hamper safe driving hits a street cone during yesterday's event at Qwest field parking lot.

Mark Rahner | Fatal distraction

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I'm standing in Qwest Field's parking lot on a chilly morning to drive an obstacle course while blabbing and texting on a cellphone. And to demonstrate the obvious: It impairs driving.

State Sen. Tracey Eide, D-Federal Way, invited media to the exercise because she's introducing legislation Monday to make it a primary offense, rather than a secondary one, to drive while using a cellphone that isn't hands-free.

That means police wouldn't have to wait for you to commit a first violation to bust you for checking e-mail behind the wheel.

Drivers with intermediate licenses or learner's permits wouldn't be allowed to use any kind of wireless communication device. The fine: $124, but more if you cause a collision and injure someone. Rep. Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle, is sponsoring a companion bill in the House.

Eide cites research that driving while cell blabbing makes you as likely to crash as someone with a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level (the legal limit), and 23 times more likely to crash if you're texting.

She admonishes us, "We do not get into a vehicle to get on our phones. We get into a vehicle to get from point A to point B safely."

I get a jarring flashback to my high-school driver's ed instructor, Mr. Henry: "You're gonna be laughing real hard when you wake up DEAD!"

But thinking of a friend who'd gotten T-boned and injured by a teenage driver on a cell — not to mention countless near-misses that prompted me to finger-shoot other drivers like Charles Bronson — it seems the legislation doesn't go far enough.

I ask Eide if she'd consider a law like the ones adding worse penalties to crimes that involve guns: Cause a wreck while you're on a cellphone, go to Gitmo. She doesn't find that feasible.

The cars are boxy little Scions. Not exactly what Steve McQueen would have torn through San Francisco in.

In the back seat for instruction: day-glo-jacketed Jeff Maher of Swerve Driver Training. First, we run through the obstacle course of what Maher calls "green cone children" cell-free. Some of it's hard even without the distractions because of abrupt flashing lights that dictate which direction to drive.

Next, I take a run-through talking on the phone.

Since we're journalists, we should also be holding coffee, smoking and perhaps shaving. Or in the case of the TV people, putting on makeup.

I'm thinking "French Connection" and, hitting the gas, I plow into a couple of cones.

Now for driving while texting. I'm swerving around cones, thumbing in a message with the phone in the 12 o'clock position, and Jeff The Instructor is shouting at me to go faster. Get off my back, dude.

Jeff The Instructor is POUNDING ON THE BACK OF MY SEAT to get me to go faster. I want Mr. Henry to meet this man and then apologize to me.

I stop the Scion at the course's end after clumsily texting "blourgh do I neefa drk" — and I haven't hit a single cone while texting!

High fives with Jeff The Instructor seem inappropriate, though.

DRIVER USING CELL PHONE INVOLVED IN CRASH

From WBNG.com:

By WBNG News

Story Created: Jan 7, 2010 at 11:12 AM EST

Story Updated: Jan 7, 2010 at 2:10 PM EST

Binghamton,NY (WBNG Binghamton) Careless driving sends one person to the hospital after after a one car crash in Binghamton.

Emergency crews responded to the scene on I-81 North shortly before 9am Thursday morning.

Binghamton Police say the driver was using his cell phone while attempting to take exit 3.

He hit the guard rail, lost control, and ended up off the road.He was taken to the hospital with minor injuries.

Cheshire man, 20, dies at Killington

New Haven Register

CHESHIRE — A 2008 graduate of Cheshire High School died on Christmas Eve in a snowboarding accident at Killington Resort in Vermont.

Alex Westphal, 20, suffered massive internal injuries when he collided with an immovable object, probably a pole or tree, according to his father, Ryan Westphal.

Ryan, wife Ann and Alex Westphal had traveled to Vermont Wednesday morning for a Christmas vacation. They had many fond memories of a ski vacation 15 years earlier that they wanted to re-create, Ryan said. Alex Westphal’s parents brought him to Killington, then left to check into the hotel and go cross-country skiing while Alex snowboarded.

At 11:44 a.m., on his first or second run of the day, Alex Westphal sent his parents a photo he took with his cell phone from the top of the mountain.

“We’re a family that has a lot of contact. It was his way of having us share in that moment at the top of the mountain,” Ryan Westphal said Sunday. “Being up there, being out in nature, he was just incredibly happy.”

At 12:01 p.m., a volunteer ski patrolman found Alex Westphal and started CPR. Ryan Westphal said the CPR continued for about 40 minutes as his son was taken to the hospital, but Alex had died on the mountain.

State troopers found Ryan and Ann Westphal, who were cross-country skiing, and told them what had happened. The reality of the situation didn’t sink in until they went to the hospital and saw their son, said Ryan Westphal. On Christmas day, the couple went to the site of the accident to piece together what had transpired. Ryan Westphal believed it happened quickly, and nothing could have been done to save Alex.

After returning to Cheshire, the Westphals were contacted by one of Alex’s college fraternity brothers. Word of Alex’s accident was spreading, and a Facebook page dedicated to his memory had been created. By late Sunday, nearly 650 people had joined.

“It’s really mind-blowing. People from all different aspects of his life ... are chiming in and saying something nice about him,” said Ryan Westphal. “It’s really helpful in a really difficult time to know that so many people felt that his life mattered.”

Alex Westphal’s funeral will be held this week in Iowa, but his parents are planning a memorial service in Connecticut in the near future. Ryan Westphal said they had initially planned to have a few of his close friends attend, but they’ve been “just blown away” by the “outpouring of people expressing their feelings for him.”

Alex Westphal was in his sophomore year at Hofstra University, but planned to transfer to the SAE Institute in New York City in January to pursue an audio technology degree. Alex’s father said he’d been majoring in business at Hofstra, but his true passion was music.

Alex Westphal was born in South Dakota, and his family moved around to Nashville, Tenn., and Portland, Ore.. before settling in Cheshire in 2000, said Ryan Westphal.

At Cheshire High School, Alex Westphal played basketball, baseball and football, according to his father. His baseball coach, Bill Mrowka, remembered him as very athletic and easy-going. Alex Westphal didn’t let things bother him, but “just kind of rolled with it,” Mrowka said.

Alex Westphal joined the football team senior year.

“He was a great kid,” said Mark Ecke, football coach and a school resource officer at the high school. “A pretty talented athlete, but bigger than that. He came out, he got injured for us, then he stuck with it. He was just a great kid — great kid to be around, positive attitude, always had a smile on his face.”

Ryan Westphal said his son also loved animals, and fostered more than 250 kittens and puppies. Alex Westphal loved music, and would DJ and make his own music. He also did modeling in New York City, and appeared in a photo shoot in Cosmopolitan magazine.

Teen faces charge for August crash that killed Lincoln girl

From JournalStar.com:

Prosecutors have charged a 16-year-old boy with motor vehicle homicide for an August crash in south Lincoln that took the life of a 16-year-old girl.
Taylor Mortensen, a junior at Lincoln Southeast High School, went to court last week for the first time on the misdemeanor. He is set to return in February.
Police say Mortensen's Monte Carlo T-boned Emily Johnson's Honda Accord on Aug. 22 as she drove across Pine Lake Road after stopping for a stop sign on 34th Street.
Rescue workers whisked both of the young drivers to the hospital, where Johnson, a junior at Southwest High School, died.
In the days that followed, police went to Mortensen's home Aug. 27 with a search warrant, snapped pictures of his Samsung cell phone and left with it. Police haven't said publicly what, if anything, they found on it.
Months passed with no court action until the Lancaster County Attorney's office quietly filed the charge in adult court on Dec. 16.
Mortensen can ask that the case be transferred to juvenile court because of his age, but he is not eligible for diversion because the charge is not among those that can be diverted.
By state law, motor vehicle homicide occurs when a person "causes the death of another unintentionally while engaged in the operation of a motor vehicle in violation of the law of the State of Nebraska or in violation of any city or village ordinance..."
In the complaint, Deputy County Attorney Eric Miller alleged Mortensen was driving over the speed limit or driving "carelessly or without due caution."
Neither Miller nor others in the office returned messages seeking comment.
Chief Deputy County Attorney Joe Kelly said last month that when he heard of the crash he wondered, as others did, if Mortensen had been speeding or on a cell phone.
At that time he said police were still working to determine what had happened.

Texting drivers more likely to crash

From Salt Lake Tribune:

A new study by University of Utah psychologists finds that drivers who send and receive text messages drive more erratically and are six times more likely to crash than drivers who aren't texting.
Researchers found that drivers must "switch" all their attention away from the road when they are composing or reading text messages. Consequently, this activity is far riskier than talking to a passenger and 50 percent more risky than conversing on a cell phone, which past U. research has found also impairs driving ability.
"We show that mechanisms involved in texting and talking are very different in terms of attention. If someone is talking on the phone, they are dividing attention between talking and driving," said Frank Drews, an associate professor of psychology who is lead author in the study published in the current edition of the journal Human Factors . "In text messaging, it is an all-or-nothing process. If you are texting, you are not paying attention to driving. You are basically driving blind."
At least 19 states, including Utah, and many municipalities have banned texting behind the wheel, while none has completely banned talking on the phone.
Under the leadership of Drews and colleague David Strayer, a co-author on the new study, the U. has become a leading center for experiments on distracted driving. Strayer adapted a three-screen driving simulator to allow behavioral scientists to document reaction times, trailing distances and other driving behaviors in conjunction with nondriving tasks.
Distracted driving accounts for 6,000 fatalities a year, Drews said, and cell phones are the most common distraction in a growing array of on-board electronics, like entertainment and GPS systems and laptops.
Public-safety advocates say the U. experiments inform public policy discussions and help quantify the real costs of distracted driving.
"We can take this data, combine it with prevalence information and estimate how many crashes are caused by text messaging. Legislators need to know that stuff," said David Teater, senior director for transportation safety initiatives at the National Safety Council.
The federal National Highway Traffic Safety Administration uses street observations made in daylight and good weather to estimate the prevalence of cell phone use behind the wheel. These estimates cannot distinguish between those who are dialing a call, texting, or e-mailing, but they figure 11 percent of the driving public is using a cell phone at any given time. A small minority was seen manipulating the keys, leading observers to estimate that one in 100 motorists at this moment is jabbing phone buttons rather than looking at the road, Teater said.
The U. researchers selected 20 students, ages 19 to 23, to participate in the latest study as drivers, and 20 friends to engage in a texted conversation with the drivers as they piloted the simulator. Nearly all the participants, who used their own phones for the experiments, said they text while driving more than once a week.
"We wanted to mimic actual texting, which is something you do with someone you know," Drews said. "We gave them the task to coordinate evening activities. We wanted them to plan the evening using text messaging, something very typical."
Researchers found the texting drivers' reactions times slowed by 30 percent (versus nine percent for those talking on a phone). The distance from the car in front of them was more varied, they inadvertently changed lanes, and sometimes rammed cars in front of them. Six of the seven collisions that occurred during the study involved a texter.
While more states are banning texting while driving, Teaters suspects texting is "escalating at a dramatic rate," and not just among young drivers. Even the most well-meaning people find the message tone an irresistible cue to pick up the phone.
"We believe there is an addictive quality to this," he said. "It's almost a Pavlovian response."

Man on sidewalk struck by van; cops think driver distracted by cell phone

From BND.com:

A man , 51, is in critical condition after getting struck by a van while standing on a sidewalk in North St. Louis.
The accident happened Saturday afternoon in the 8300 block of Halls Ferry Road.
Police think the driver, 23, bent down to pick up a cell phone and lost control of the vehicle. She was ticketed for careless and imprudent driving and could be facing more charges.

Family seeks texting ban on roads

From HCNONLINE.com:

The family of a man who died when his motorcycle was struck by the vehicle of a driver reading a cell phone text message wants texting while driving to be outlawed in Texas.

Recent legislation prohibits any use of cell phones in school zones throughout Texas and for drivers under 17 with restricted licenses. Efforts to ban or reduce any use of cell phones while driving, however, withered in various committees of the Texas Legislature last session.

Jonathan David Porter, 22, of New Caney, was sentenced in the 435th state District Court of Judge Michael Seiler to 90 days in the Montgomery County Jail after pleading guilty Thursday to the felony charges of criminally negligent homicide and failure to stop and render aid. Porter left the scene of a fatal wreck March 16 that killed Douglas Allen Jr., of Splendora.

Allen was attempting a left turn in front of the Porter Sports Bar on Loop 494 around 8 p.m. when the motorcycle was struck from behind by a 2006 Honda sedan driven by Porter. The impact pushed Allen’s 2002 Harley-Davidson motorcycle into oncoming traffic.

Allen, whose wife worked at the sports bar, then was hit by a Chevy Tahoe.

Just before he hit Allen’s motorcycle, Porter was reading a text message that had come in on his cell phone, which he had placed on the passenger seat, said Tay Bond, Porter’s attorney.

“When someone sent him a text message he heard come in on his phone ... he momentarily looked at his phone to discern what it was,” Bond said. “When he looked up, Mr. Allen had slowed to turn left, with his blinker on.”

Porter was not texting when the accident occurred, Bond said.

“He was not putting in input into his phone to send a text message,” he said. “This was a tragic accident. If Mr. Porter had stayed on the scene, he would not have put himself in the position he was in.”

Porter fled the scene after hitting Allen’s motorcycle, and he abandoned his vehicle about a mile past the wreck scene, fleeing on foot into the woods, said Assistant District Attorney Jim Prewitt, who prosecuted the case.

He turned himself in to police the next day, Bond said.

“When he contacted his father, his father said, ‘When I get back into town, we are going immediately to the police,’” he said. “Mr. Porter agreed. That’s exactly what they did the next day, without benefit of an attorney.”

While Allen’s family doesn’t believe Porter was punished enough, they now want to concentrate their efforts on banning texting while driving through the state, said Connie Houchin, a longtime close friend of the family who is staying with Betty Allen, Douglas Allen’s mother.

“We know if it’s happened to us, it’s happened to others,” she said. “Last week, I saw two accidents that nearly happened in a parking lot because the drivers were texting.”

Houchin’s daughter lives in California, she said, which has a comprehensive ban on the use of handheld cell phones while driving. A ban on text messaging while driving goes into effect there Jan. 1.

California is one of six states, along with the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands, that prohibit all drivers from talking on handheld devices while driving, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association (ghsa.org). Nineteen states, the District of Columbia and Guam ban text messaging for all drivers.

In addition to novice drivers, Texas also prohibits school bus drivers from all use of cell phones when students are riding.

Montgomery County legislators did not return calls seeking comment on whether they believe the Legislature should pass a statewide ban on text messaging.

But several cities in Texas, including Austin, have passed their own bans on texting while driving within city limits. It’s an issue the city of Conroe could take a look at sometime in the future, Mayor Webb Melder said.

“It’s probably a subject that will wind up crossing our paths,” he said. “Sooner or later, things come to our attention, like smoking or bad dogs.”

Porter could have faced up to 10 years in prison for the failure to stop and render aid charge, and up to two years in state jail for the charge of criminally negligent homicide, according to the Texas Penal Code.

Prosecutors had asked that Porter receive some prison time, Prewitt said.

“We felt it was the type of case that warrants incarceration,” he said. “That’s the decision the judge made, and we will certainly abide by it.”

Porter also must undergo a motorcycle awareness course and notify others who attend the course about the details of the wreck and Allen’s death, Prewitt said.

In addition to the 90 days in the Montgomery County Jail, which he is now serving, Porter received five years’ probation for criminally negligent homicide and 10 years’ probation for failure to stop and render aid – the longest period of probation the judge could give him for that charge, Bond said.

“My feeling is that the court weighed the decision of the Porter family to make Jonathan available to the police the next morning, to admit what he had done, to never deny the circumstances of the accident and to accept the responsibility for it by pleading guilty,” Bond said.

No witnesses to the accident reported any erratic driving by Porter, he said.

“The most important issue in the case is the Porter family feels extremely bad for the Allen family. Certainly the Allen family is having to deal with a lot more,” he said.

“This is a good lesson about how a moment’s distraction can have horrible, lifelong consequences.”

Something needs to be done in Texas about texting while driving, Houchin said, and it’s the Allen family’s hope that something will be done soon.

“Everything happens for a reason,” she said, “and maybe this is the reason.”