Personal Responsibility
This Editorial appears in the Aug. 10 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Keeping both hands on the wheel and texting a message on a handheld device cannot occur at the same moment in time.
By definition, texting while driving is a patently unsafe activity. There is no contortion of a physical or philosophical nature that can get around that fact. Or to put it more plainly: It’s a no-brainer.
Thumb-typing and reading instant messages on a small screen while on the move is a manifestation of our evolving dependency on mobile communications. Texting is only the latest distraction to creep into transportation and begin exacting a human toll. The body count became noticeable last year when the texting operator of a Los Angeles commuter train failed to notice an impending collision with another train. He and 24 others died. Sadly, the evidence is mounting on streets and highways. Road carnage increasingly is traced to a driver fiddling with a cell phone.
The problem of distraction to safe driving is complex. It involves not only cell phones but also Global Positioning System maps, changing the radio station, conversing with other people, drinking a cup of coffee, reaching for a cigarette lighter, and glancing in the mirror or at a gauge on the dashboard.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has resurrected an attempt to learn more about how driver distractions creep into the truck cab and how they can be ameliorated. But the recent release of a Virginia Tech study is galvanizing attention on the growing use of the cell phone and its PDA cousins by drivers of all stripes.
As reported in the iTECH supplement in the center of this edition of Transport Topics, some trucking fleets recognize that simply carrying on a conversation using a cell phone, even with a hands-free connection, is dangerously distracting. They require their drivers to stow their phones when operating their trucks.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration acknowledges that the “cognitive distraction” of conversation “is significant enough to degrade a driver’s performance.”
And “we all know that texting while driving is dangerous,” as Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood declared last week. The federal government is likely to try to do something about it, if only by pressuring states to legislate laws and by launching public awareness campaigns.
Laws may be useful in some regard, but enforcement is the weak link there, so government can do only so much. Now is the time for personal responsibility to step to the plate.
