BIG BROTHER, take the wheel! Take the cellphones out of our hands!
Short of a federal ban, it seems no common sense is in sight for yakking on cellphones or text-messaging while driving. Just what is it that we are waiting for, with many drivers mauling pedestrians and distracted mass transit drivers crashing a train or a bus?
For over a decade the dangerous technological obsession has been studied with no uniform political action. In 1997, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the risk of crashing the car quadrupled if the driver was talking on a cellphone. A 2003 Harvard study found that cellphone use was involved in 636,000 accidents, causing 330,000 moderate to critical injuries, 2,600 deaths, and $43 billion of health and property damage.
University of Utah researchers found in 2006 that driving while talking on a cellphone slows down reaction time so dramatically that it is the equivalent of driving drunk. They also found no difference in the effect of hand-held vs. hands-free talking devices. Talking on a cellphone while driving is so intense, with drivers deluding themselves that talking is an act that can be taken for granted, the researchers said “drivers may not be aware of their own impaired driving. . . . There appears to be a disconnect between participants’ self-perception of driving performance and objective measures of their driving performance. . . . One consequence of using a cellphone is that it may make drivers insensitive to their own impaired driving behavior.’’
Because of these and many more studies, the National Safety Council, whose board of directors represent a wide swath of American industry, is campaigning for Americans to not use cellphones while driving. Similarly, the National Transportation Safety Board has called for federal bans on cellphone use by bus drivers.
David Teater, senior director of transportation strategic initiatives for the National Safety Council, says, “It’s just not possible for our brains to focus on the road and the call or text.’’
I know it is indeed impossible to focus on the road and a call at the same time. Despite previous columns decrying the practice because I was nearly hit as a pedestrian, I still have felt many phone calls were too important to miss, only to nearly rear-end a car, or nearly hit someone crossing the street.
In research last year, Utah researcher David Strayer and his colleagues found that driving while talking on a cellphone clogs traffic with slower drivers who were less likely to change lanes. “If you get two or three people gumming up the system, it starts to cascade and slows everybody’s commute,’’ Stayer has said. On top of that, Strayer and researchers also found that cellphone conversations are very different from having a conversation in the car with a fellow passenger. Driving while talking on a cellphone was more dangerous.
One possible reason is that “passengers take an active role in supporting the driver as indicated by passengers more frequently talking about the surrounding traffic. It seems likely that a passenger supports the driver by directing attention to the surrounding traffic when perceived necessary.’’
Meanwhile, cellphone users figuratively disappear into the cellphone instead of keeping their eyes on the road. “The conversation partner on the cellphone cannot be aware of changes in the driving environment,’’ that study said.
With all that, it is time for the nation’s politicians, including President Obama, to be aware of the changes in the driving environment. If cellphone driving is as dramatic as driving drunk, we ought to get as mad about it as MADD. It is time to ban the practice once and for all.
Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com. 
