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Drivers fail to get message on hazards of texting
The Los Angeles train crash probe has renewed focus on the dangers of texting while driving.
One day last summer, Jim Messer, a Florida attorney, nearly was run off the road by another car. When he recovered, he says, he saw the other driver texting on her cell phone, balanced on the wheel.
“There’s gotta be a law against this,” Messer thought. But there wasn’t — not in his state, anyway. He’s been working since then to get one passed.
Despite a general belief that texting at the wheel could jeopardize lives, only five states –Alaska, Washington, Louisiana, Minnesota and New Jersey — and the District of Columbia currently ban drivers from doing it.
Now investigators are looking into whether texting may have played a role in the disastrous Los Angeles train crash that killed 25. Two teenage train enthusiasts told a television station that the engineer, who was killed, had sent them a text message a minute before the crash. No cell phone was found at the scene.
For now, no data directly ties text messaging to traffic accidents. Though 74 percent of Americans 18 to 29 years old use text messaging, according to the Pew Research Center, it is only a few years old.
But a 2006 government study found that nearly eight out of 10 collisions or near-crashes involved distracted drivers of some sort. And everyone knows that checking e-mails or sending a text message, just like talking on a cell phone or playing with the radio, can distract a driver. Charlie Klauer of the Virginia Tech Traffic Institute, who worked on the 2006 study, said the risk was doubled when a driver looked away from the road for two seconds out of six.
“Texting is potentially even more risky than speaking on a cell phone, because you’re not only taking your mind off the road — you’re taking your eyes off the road,” said Russ Rader of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
But in the aftermath of a crash, proving that texting or e-mailing was responsible has been difficult.
Police in upstate New York found a series of messages sent and received from 17-year-old Bailey Goodman’s phone just before her sport utility vehicle slammed into a tractor-trailer in June 2007, killing her and four friends who had just graduated from Fairport High School in suburban Rochester. But they couldn’t tell if she was the one using her phone.
Still, that was enough for a state senator to propose banning texting while driving in New York, where using a handheld cell phone has been banned since 2001. The bill remains in committee.
Twelve other states have bans applying to only some drivers, such as those under 18 or operating a bus.
One emergency room doctor said he suspects that most people don’t initiate text messages while driving but can’t help responding to them.
“It’s hard to ignore the temptation,” said Dr. Mark Melrose of Mountainside Hospital in Montclair, N. J., a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians. “You think, ‘This might be important, I’d better check.’ You know you shouldn’t be doing it, but you do it anyway.”
That’s an apt way to describe the habits of Liz Osaki, 23, who works at an advertising agency on the outskirts of Boston. Her daily commute is about an hour each way. And yes, she texts at the wheel, though mostly when she is in traffic or stopped at a light. Even when she is not, “I promise I am still looking at the road,” she said.
The only mishaps Osaki reports are occasionally missing the moment a light turns from red to green or not realizing as fast as she should that cars in front have braked suddenly. She argues that texting actually can be safer in the car than speaking on a cell phone.
“I think it’s less distracting because when I’m texting, I can always just throw the phone down,” she said. “You can’t do that in the middle of a phone conversation.”
More to the point is the fact that for Osaki, like many young Americans, texting has become second nature, often a preferred means of communication to speaking on the phone.
“I text to ask simple questions and get simple answers,” she said. “Most of my friends don’t even like to check their voice mail.”
Her phone bill was proof of her habit: 1,000 text messages — more than 30 a day.
Texting is clearly the territory of the young. The Pew Research survey, conducted last spring, showed that while 78 percent of all adults own a cell phone, only 24 percent of those over 50 and 6 percent of those over 65 used it to text.
In some countries, a researcher notes, teenagers even prefer to write papers and letters on a 12-button phone keypad rather than the usual computer keyboard.
Does this mean that teens of the future will be able to text in their cars, without even looking down at their phones? Not likely. And safety advocates across the country, such as Messer in Florida, are pushing their state legislatures to adopt bans.
But Osaki is skeptical. “I’m not really sure how it could be enforced,” she said. “And I feel like the younger generation is pretty good at getting away with stuff like this. I know how we work.”
