Ken Nelson

Tripple whammy… makeup, cell phone and young girl driving. Take cover!

LiveScience reports that drivers talking on cell phones cause a lot of harm:

Cell phone distraction causes 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States every year, according to the journal’s publisher, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

The reaction effects can turn a 20 year old with excellent reflexes into a drunk 70 year old:

"If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, their reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver who is not using a cell phone," said University of Utah psychology professor David Strayer. "It’s like instantly aging a large number of drivers."

Naturally, some will use this information to want to ban the use of cell phones while driving. Given how complicated and intertwined our world I wouldn’t be surprised if that then caused more (but immeasurable) deaths and economic harm.

I do not chat on the phone. I use a phone to convey needed information and then hang up. I find my cell phone invaluable. I can check into the office from anywhere. They can reach me anywhere. I can work, and importantly, play anywhere.

So I want to be able to talk to people while I’m driving.  But I don’t want to “chat”.

A limit I could live with was a 5 minute rule… no call could last longer than 5 minutes if the phone GPS or tower triangulation indicates driving speeds.  Perhaps the limit should be 10 minutes, so as to avoid the dangerous dialing sequence. 

You could convey information but not chat.

Accidents would still be caused by cell phone usage but they would drop precipitously while the conveniences of cell phones wouldn’t be harmed terribly.

I’m open to limits but banning would be ignored.