To its credit, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is taking the driver distraction problem seriously. Last Tuesday’s all-day conference at the Department of Transportation was educational and enlightening, providing varied views from a broad cross section of stakeholders.
The issue deserves the attention of federal regulators, though not necessarily regulation. Cell phone-yakking drivers are killing folks: two-and-a-half-year-old Morgan Lee Pena, Angela Joy White and Heather McLeod, to name a few. A few too many.
While policy-makers and industry mull possible remedies (research, education, regulation, broader traffic accident data collection by police, improved mobile phone/telematics design, etc.), there is one indomitable force over which neither government nor industry has control: culture.
We, the people, living in this wonderful American land of good and plenty, are a rude bunch.
Combine this rudeness and overall disdain for authority with Digital America’s growing hunger for real-time information and its love affair with cars and the great open road, and you quickly realize that abstinence-either voluntary or mandated-is not in the cards.
Getting the nation’s 94 million mobile-phone subscribers to exercise some common sense when they get behind the wheel is no easy task. Why would anyone make safety the most important call when drivers routinely flout traffic laws generally.
A recent Washington Post article underscored this trend: “To most people, stealing is a moral issue. It’s ingrained in people. People would feel guilty about shoplifting,” Allan F. William, a researcher with the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, told the paper. “I don’t see the same thing on the highway. If I run a red light when there’s no one to contend with, that’s not considered much of anything.”
Julie Rochman, a spokeswoman for the insurance group, opined that folks feel emboldened in their vehicles. Lawrence W. Sherman, a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Post it goes deeper: “Driving a car becomes almost like alcohol. It suspends inhibitions.” Thus, digital devices in cars suddenly become potentially combustible. At the same time, mobile phones and other digital gizmos in cars offer many public safety benefits. What to do?
Doing nothing is not an option. The driver distraction problem is at once simple and complex. Talking while driving-even with hands-free devices-can be dangerous. Same goes with changing the radio station, cassette or CD, eating, and reaching back to calm a crying toddler.
The worst fear of wireless and auto industries is federal regulation. Several communities already have banned mobile-phone talking while driving, and state legislatures have it on their radar screens.
The best way to avoid federal regulation is for industry to be responsible. That means more and better education, research and product design. Viewing the car as the newest converged device and feeding the insatiable hunger of digital consumers without regard for safety, is not a step in the right direction.
