Hang up and drive already

So what does a rant about cell phone use while driving have to do with smart growth or the environment, you may wonder?

Well, enough to put it in this blog, say I.  This smart growth thing is about community, and building neighborhoods and metro areas in ways that are walkable, and safe for pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers alike.  Smart growth won’t work if people think they can only be comfortable away from other people.  We need safe streets and roads if we are going to have environmentally sustainable communities.

So what the heck is the deal?  In my community, it’s supposedly illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving and using a hand-held device.  Sure.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a law that is more arrogantly flaunted and unenforced.  Walking home from the Metro, five blocks through relatively quiet residential streets, I’m likely to see at least a half-dozen drivers holding phones to their ears, and I don’t even want to think about text-messaging.

The best research has been conducted at the University of Utah, and been reported both on the university’s site and, as updated last week, on MSNBC.COM.  Here are some of the things the research shows:

• Driving while talking on a cell phone is just as statistically dangerous as driving while drunk.

• Drivers who talk on cell phones are five times more likely to have an accident than drivers who don’t.

• “Motorists who talked on either handheld or hands-free cell phones drove slightly slower, were 9 percent slower to hit the brakes, displayed 24 percent more variation in following distance as their attention switched between driving and conversing, [and] were 19 percent slower to resume normal speed after braking.”

• “The reason is ‘inattention blindness,’ in which motorists look directly at road conditions but don’t really see them because they are distracted by a cell phone conversation. And such drivers aren’t aware they are impaired.”

• Drivers who use cell phones drive erratically and slow down traffic for everyone, even when they are lucky enough not to be hurting anyone.

• And, by the way, it’s not whether or not your hands are free; it’s that your attention is distracted.  Being hands-free doesn’t really help.

Why isn’t an organization like MADD all over this?  What does it take?  I walk; I ride a bike; I drive; I have people in my life that I care about.  And I find our society’s tolerance of this hazard outrageous.

By the way, if I can find an environmental connection implicating cell phone use in restaurants, I'll blog about that, too.