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EDITORIAL: High-risk behavior: Driving and gabbing: Group that brought us seat belts now wisely wants cellphone ban
Jan 22, 2009 (The Miami Herald - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
The National Safety Council, a congressionally mandated group that led the campaign to make seat belts mandatory, now is taking aim at cellphones. The NSC is urging all states to ban the use of both hand-held and hand-free cellphones while driving.
State legislatures, heavily lobbied by the cellphone industry to not regulate calling on the road, should at last heed this rallying cry for increasing road safety. Six states -- California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Utah and Washington, plus the District of Columbia -- have banned the use of hand-held phones while driving, although no state seems ready to ban all cellphone use behind the wheel.
But the NSC says no cellphone use is safest when operating a moving vehicle. After reviewing more than 50 studies examining safety and cellphone use in vehicles, the organization says using a cellphone on the road increases the risk of a car crash fourfold. One study is from the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, which estimated that 6 percent of vehicle accidents causing about 2,600 deaths and 12,000 serious injuries annually are attributable to cellphone use.
These aren't just dry numbers; they represent 2,600 men, women and children who were killed because someone was more preoccupied with a phone conversation than with driving safely. This is well over 2,000 grieving families. Is making a phone call while behind the wheel really worth that terrible risk?
Apparently, cellphone manufacturers think the answer is Yes. They pay lip service to urging customers to use cellphones responsibly on the road while aggressively beating down numerous attempts to regulate phone use while driving. A good example is close to home. A few years back the Miami-Dade County Commission and the city of Pinecrest each enacted bans on using hand-held cellphones behind the wheel.
Save lives
Before either local government began enforcing the bans, the Legislature, goaded by the wireless industry, adopted a law that prohibited local governments from enacting regulations affecting cellphone users in vehicles, giving the state that sole power. This, of course, voided the local ordinances.
This is hardly the first time the Legislature has stepped on local governments' toes in order to please special interests. After Miami-Dade and Broward counties passed strict gun-control ordinances, the National Rifle Association appealed to state lawmakers. In no time, lawmakers adopted the NRA's proposal to forbid local governments from regulating gun sales.
Now, however, local officials should use the NSC's campaign to press Florida's Legislature to take the first step by outlawing the use of hand-held cellphones while driving. Dealing with hands-free cells could come later. If these bans can save lives, and reliable studies say they can, lawmakers will be hard-pressed to explain why they oppose them.
To see more of The Miami Herald or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.herald.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The Miami Herald Distributed by
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax
to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave.,
Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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