Is there a smart phone app that would interrupt a person and sternly instruct, “Hang up and drive!” “And use your blinker while you’re at it!”
Is there an app that would alert the Legislature to the fact that annual, incremental changes to the phoning-while-driving law do little to enhance safety?
For years, Sen. Tracey Eide, D-Federal Way, has doggedly introduced cell phone legislation, which finally resulted in our current law, which makes talking on a mobile phone while driving a secondary offense, meaning drivers must be pulled over for another infraction first.
This year, two bills being introduced would make holding a phone and driving a primary offense. But it would still be perfectly legal to use a hands-free device. (In 2006, text messaging behind the wheel was deemed a primary offense.)
Washington is one of six states and the District of Columbia that have cell phone laws, but is the only one of those that considers the use of a phone without a hands-free device a secondary offense.
Critics of the legislation, such as the cell phone industry, argue that drivers face many distractions while driving, and it’s unfair to pick on mobile phone users.
Apparently it’s only researchers and scientists, sounding like fuddy-duddy landline Luddites, who object to legislation that incorrectly assumes that using a hands-free device while driving is safer than using a cell phone, or safe at all.
Researchers point to studies that show as far as the brain is concerned, distraction-wise, there is absolutely no difference between using a cell phone or a hands-free device. And study after study shows that talking on a phone while driving makes a person as prone to errors as a drunken driver.
“It’s not that your hands aren’t on the wheel,” David Strayer, director of the Applied Cognition Laboratory at the University of Utah, told the New York Times. “It’s that your mind is not on the road.”
Belatedly, the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration last year called for a complete ban on phoning and driving, but such a recommendation is only so much static to multitasking drivers and lawmakers.
(On the other hand, a study released last year showed that in states with laws banning cell phone use in cars, teens actually used their phones more.)
Certainly Washington’s cell-phone using drivers pay no attention to our law. It’s sometimes harder to spot a phone-free driver than vice versa. Making cell-phone use a primary offense, while encouraging the use of hands-free devices, won’t improve safety much, but should help the state coffers when police start issuing tickets.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
