On September 21, U.S. Transportation Secretary Raymond LaHood will convene a second national summit meeting about distracted driving, which now accounts for an estimated 6,000 deaths and 500,000 injuries annually. The experts will gather while auto manufacturers roll out their 2011 models, many of which will feature a new wave of collaboration with the electronics industry that is certain to create more distractions for more drivers: dashboard-mounted computer screens with Internet access, and enhanced video, audio, telephone, and navigation systems. The Secretary and his guests will focus primarily on how our laws can keep pace with this rapidly-changing technology.
Distracted driving, of course, has been a problem since the invention of the automobile, but in the past few years, cell phones and text messaging have multiplied the problem. Researchers now identify three types of distracted driving: visual (eyes off the road), manual (hands off the wheel), and cognitive (mind off safe operation). Hand-held cell phones are demonstrably dangerous, but text messaging has emerged as the most notorious because it involves all three distractions, makes a crash 23 times more likely, and is practiced by two-thirds of 18 to 24-year-old and 20 percent of all drivers.
Our primary response to the relatively sudden emergence of cell phone and texting distractions has been to pass state laws (motor vehicle laws generally being the province of the states) that try to define, and then limit or ban, these actions. Thus, we now have an inconsistent, nationwide patchwork of rules. At present, nine states ban hand-held phones, and 32 states prohibit texting, but among these states, the variations are huge: Some laws simply address cell phones, while others target “electronic devices” or “mobile” or “wireless” equipment. Still others outlaw “hand-held communications.” Among the rest, we find attempts to describe and limit emails, voice mails, instant messages, iPods, MP-3 players, pagers, personal digital assistants, DVDs, and GPSs. Some states even distinguish between factory-installed and plugged-in devices. Meanwhile, many states exempt navigation systems from their bans, and most important, very few have definitions that cover computers installed in the dashboard.
In two ways, this current focus on cell phones and texting is misdirected. First, these are hardly the only distractions: a recent study conducted by NHTSA documented risks that have nothing to do with electronics: reaching for an object, swatting an insect, focusing on something or someone off road, reading a billboard, personal grooming or hygiene, adjusting a mirror, or attending to a passenger. Second, our laws simply cannot keep pace with the ever-evolving collaborations of automakers and electronics companies – and it is folly even to try.
We need an approach to distracted driving that acknowledges these realities. Our focus should be on the driver’s failure to pay attention, not the reason for the distraction. We need a uniform, national standard. The upcoming summit should recognize that attempts to write laws that keep pace with the type of device from which drivers receive email, voice mail, texts, data, music, or video is nearly impossible. And it matters not to a relative or friend killed or injured by a distracted driver that the diversion was a Smartphone App delivering baseball scores, an attractive person on a street corner, a pop-up ad for a clothing sale, or reaching into the back seat to change what the kids are watching.
We would do better to champion state legislatures adopting a uniform law that would say something like (oversimplified here to make the point): “It shall be unlawful for the driver of any motor vehicle in motion to engage in any activity that takes the driver’s eyes off the road, hands off the wheel, or attention from operating the vehicle in a safe manner.” If every state adopted a prohibition of this type, changes in technology like the imminent introduction of computers would become irrelevant, and every driver in every state would have a common standard. Law enforcement officers would be spared from trying to determine whether the particular electronics in the car they have just stopped are covered by their state’s laws.
Congress can help, by using its power to withhold federal highway funds to push states to adopt a uniform law on distracted driving.
Those who will convene in Washington should consider that this public safety threat, which on average kills 16 people per day and injures 1,400, requires a uniform focus on drivers paying attention, not the ever-changing sources that distract them.
