Time To Hang up the Dang Phone

Save a life, stay off the car phone

By Kelvin Wade | | June 05, 2008 15:43

I was driving home from a doctor's appointment the other day while talking to my friend Joyce on my cell phone. I was deftly piloting my ginormous vehicle in and out of traffic one handedly while cursing the other numskulls driving while talking on their cell phones. There's something about talking to someone on a cell phone while driving that shields the speaker from feelings of hypocrisy.

On July 1, a law will go into effect hopefully reducing the number of chattering distractions on the road. Come July 1, motorists will be required to use hands-free devices to speak on their cell phones while driving. Minors would be prohibited from talking on the phone, period.

I'm all for shutting minors up. It's bad enough I'm sharing the road with young people who learned to drive from Grand Theft Auto III, but I don't want my fiery death in a car accident to be preceded by a conversation about Tatum O'Neal's drug bust, Brangelina's travails or anything Britney.

A recent report by the independent, non-partisan Public Policy Institute of California says that the new law may save 300 lives a year. The study examined other states that have enacted similar laws and extrapolated from there.

It seems fishy that the study claims a reduction in deaths. Why would talking on a headset reduce traffic fatalities? I can buy it may reduce accidents because a driver might have his or her other hand on the steering wheel. But how does going from handheld to Bluetooth prevent death?

According to the study cell phones only result in death when the weather is bad and the roads are wet. Take that however you want.

Does it do what people think it does or is the law just to make folks feel better? Are we for it just because we don't like being stuck behind that pretentious jerk more involved in his conversation than the gas pedal? Is it like the no smoking in cars laws? Is it just more nanny government with an assist from cell phone headset manufacturers?

A study this past March at Carnegie Mellon University found that it is listening that causes the distraction. In Neuroscientist Marcel Just's study, he was able to see the decrease in spatial and visual processing on an MRI. It didn't matter whether one was on a headset or handset.

The bottom line is if you free up my phone holding hand, I'm going to use it for other things. I know I'm supposed to have my hands on 10 and 2 like Mr. Bailey taught me in Drivers Ed at Armijo, but with apologies to his teaching, that 2 hand is my cheeseburger hand. That's my Slurpee hand. That's my stereo adjusting hand. The only time it's on the wheel is if I'm using the other hand for an obscene gesture that my brother Tony taught me back when he was a road rager.

The real solution to this problem is to just stay off the phone while driving. If your conversations while driving is anything like the cell phone conversations I overhear in supermarkets and other public places, you're not talking about anything that can't wait.

Now only if I can get that message through my head. Peace.

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NOTES: I like talking on the phone while driving but I have to admit that most of those conversations aren't necessary conversations. I mean, I've driven for most of my adult life without talking on the phone. Why do I feel the need to do it now? Because I can. That's really all it is. I overhear these banal phone conversations in public all the time. "Dude, where are you?" "I'm about to buy a latte." "What are you doing later?" You just want to slap the phone out of their hand. But I'm doing the same dang thing.

I don't know if this law is going to make us safer. My point is that its better for people to just stop talking on the phone while driving rather than believing they're going to be safer as long as people are talking on a headset. I know how I am while driving. I don't do the 10 and 2 thing. And I know over people are just as distracted because I've spent time watching drivers on the freeway from an overpass. People are hurtling down the highway encased in metal casually chatting to their passengers, putting on makeup, shaving, eating etc...

Maybe the law will make us safer.. I'm not holding my breath.


Now....if you go to the WADING IN blog, you will read Tony's take on heavy metal and Republicanism.

If you go to the OTHER SIDE blog, you will read my response to Tony's article.