WASHINGTON-The lawyer for a 20-year-old Michigan man charged with criminally negligent homicide in connection with a fatal car crash initially attributed to driver cell-phone use claims politicians want to make a high-profile example of his client to boost chances of getting a driver handset ban through the state legislature.
But recent developments in the case and a new study appear to point less to a political conspiracy than to the tricky nature of the dialing-and-driving controversy, especially crafting public policy to address a problem national in scope.
“They’re trying to make a test case out of it,” said Shawn Patrick Smith, an attorney for Shaun Cates. Cates, 20, is blamed for causing the head-on collision last month that killed Diela Lucaj, a 55-year-old mother of three.
Cates originally was charged with criminally negligent homicide because of indications he was talking on his cell phone when the incident occurred. The charge could lead to a two-year jail term.
Not long after being charged, however, Macomb County prosecutors said evidence of drug use by Cates turned up. If a drug link is proven, the charges against Cates likely would be increased to involuntary manslaughter. The penalty for that charge is more severe, carrying up to 15 years in jail.
As such, Macomb County Assistant Prosecutor William Cataldo now has a much different take on the case than he first did when he was quoted as saying, “The cell phone is a significant distraction. It’s clear negligence. Somebody died. Somebody’s going to pay.”
Cataldo last week said all signs point to Cates’ use of drugs, not use of his cell phone, as the major contributing factor in the crash in which Lucaj died. The shift would seem to undercut Cates’ lawyer’s contention that his client is being targeted to further a political cause-banning driver use of handheld cell phones-which scores high with the public, but has thus far eluded Michigan’s state legislature.
New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, the District of Columbia and various cities prohibit drivers from talking on handheld cell phones while operating a motor vehicle, but allow them to use hands-free devices for in-vehicle cellular conversations even though studies say such gadgets do not improve driver concentration.
Yet driver handheld legislation continues to resurface in state legislatures across the country, with legislative efforts showing no indication of subsiding. If anything, those efforts are gaining momentum.
Some states have refocused efforts to try to outlaw handheld phone use and hands-free use by teen drivers. Michigan, where the Cates case is playing out, is one of them. The Michigan House passed such a measure last October with the bill currently pending before the Senate Committee on Technology and Energy.
At least 19 states considered restrictions on novice driver phone use in 2005, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. By last summer, according to the group, lawmakers passed legislation in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Tennessee and Texas.
State driver-distraction legislation is not limited to talking on cell phones since drivers face a variety of diversions, even if major government and university studies have identified cell phones as a major culprit. Indeed, University of Michigan researchers last month said a new study found talking to passengers could be just as dangerous for drivers as talking on cell phones.
“The use of cellular telephones while driving receives a lot of attention in the popular press, probably because their popularity and widespread use is relatively new,” said James Sayer, an assistant research scientist at the U-M Transportation Research Institute. “But the results of our study show that many of the other behaviors that drivers engage in, such as eating, drinking, grooming and having conversations with passengers, are potentially just as detrimental to driving performance.”
For example, researchers said driver cell-phone use did not affect speed variation, though frequency and duration of glances away from the road in front of a driver was lowest when using a cell phone-a consequence that could negatively affect scanning the roadway environment. They added that eating and drinking while driving-a common behavior-had little effect on driving performance, except for modest increases in steering variance and glance frequency, as well as more frequent braking. Researchers found a similar pattern for grooming behaviors of drivers.
With policymakers having little apparent success in curbing dialing and driving, and more people using their cell phones when driving, lawmakers are looking at options other than bans in hopes of making a dent in the problem.
South Carolina state Sen. Scott Richardson (R) and other lawmakers reportedly are investigating whether they can craft legislation that would subject a driver using a cell phone at the time of a fatal collision to a negligent homicide charge. Cases in which driver use of cell phones have prompted criminally negligent homicide charges have occurred in Texas and Tennessee.
Meantime, New Jersey lawmakers are considering making violations of the state’s handheld prohibition a primary offense rather than the current secondary offense.
Education efforts
There is growing evidence that handheld cell-phone bans, while resulting in thousands of tickets and added money for states, are being largely ignored.
The cell-phone industry, individual mobile-phone operators and, to a lesser degree, the U.S. government have tried to educate the country’s 200 million wireless subscribers-young and old-on the dangers of dialing and driving. But the ad campaigns pale in comparison to those encouraging seat-belt use and those discouraging drinking and driving, and teen drug use.
“Bans aren’t really good enough,” said Mantill Williams, a spokesman at the national office of the American Automobile Association. Williams said education is critical to improving distracted driving, but there is not enough of it.
Even the possibility of being hit with a civil lawsuit (on top of prosecution) does not seem to deter drivers from using cell phones-even in states where it is prohibited.
It is a different story in the enterprise space. Businesses have been sued in cases where employee cell-phone use was implicated in traffic accidents. As a result, firms increasingly are embracing policies restricting driver cell-phone use on company time.
