This sad story could have involved any wireless carrier and anybody, but the phone Lazaro Leiva allegedly talked on while driving a Ford Explorer last March happened to be connected to a Nextel Communications Inc. network. Leiva, according to the Miami Herald, goosed his SUV as the traffic light changed from red to green and plowed into a car carrying 79-year-old Alicia Bustos. Bustos suffered serious injuries. At his deposition, Leiva denied yakking on his wireless phone around the time of the accident. But Nextel phone records decisively proved otherwise.
A Miami-Dade Circuit Court awarded Bustos a $20.9 million award, a record in South Florida. Leiva’s employer, Little Rock, Ark.-based Dyke Industries Inc., must foot the bill. Hate to see what happens to Dyke’s insurance premium. A spokesman for the lumber company declined to comment on whether it would appeal the ruling.
As the number of cell phones (127 million and counting) in our mobile society increase, questions about responsibility and accountability for wireless driver safety persist. We already know a little something about accountability. The way things stand, Leiva’s employer is $20.9 million in the hole.
But liability may not stop with businesses that outfit employees with mobile phones. With the rise of telematics (a term of art describing the integration of the Internet, GPS, mobile phone and other digital devices into vehicles), how about car makers? Trial lawyers are watching closely.
Todd Tracy, a Dallas-based lawyer who’s knocked heads with auto firms in the past, told Automotive News (a sister pub of RCR Wireless News) that auto manufacturers could find themselves squeezed in court when skilled attorneys launch into a line of question known as the engineering triad: What did you do to prevent the hazard? What did you do to minimize the hazard? What did you do to warn against the hazard?
The Alliance of Automotive Manufacturers is close to finishing a draft of telematics safety guidelines designed to curb driver distraction. The draft will be sent to NHTSA in mid-January. But can telematics and safety coexist? How can something that cuts into a driver’s attention be anything but unsafe? Are hands-free and voice-activated technologies the answer? Some say yes. Others, like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Safety Council, aren’t so sure.
No doubt mobile phones, GPS and telematics have safety potential. But there’s more to it. Policy-makers have barely scratched the surface of the driver-distraction issue. Meantime, state law is being made at the expense of the Alicia Bustoses and the Dyke Industries of the world.
