WASHINGTON — Twenty-eight percent of all traffic accidents are caused when people talk on cellphones or send text messages while driving, according to a study released Tuesday.
The vast majority of those crashes — 1.4 million of them — are caused by cellphone conversations, while an additional 200,000 are blamed on text messaging, the National Safety Council report said.
Federal transportation officials unveiled a new organization Tuesday, patterned after Mothers Against Drunk Driving, to combat driver cellphone use.
The group, FocusDriven, grew out of a 2009 meeting in Washington held by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Most people in the U.S. own a cellphone, and it’s evident to anyone who drives regularly that huge numbers of people — including some who support a ban — use them while driving. Persuading people to break that habit will be a tall order for FocusDriven.
Enforcement of a texting ban requires officers to observe an act that usually is conducted in a driver’s lap, and hands- free devices make it possible to talk on cellphones without being observed. More than 120 studies of cellphone use suggest that requiring hands-free devices doesn’t eliminate the distraction caused by a phone conversation.
“It’s not easy to enforce (a ban), but it’s not impossible,” said Chuck Hurley, executive director of MADD, who attended Tuesday’s announcement of the new group. “The main reason people talk on their cellphones is because they can. Eventually, (signal blocking) technology will address that.”
Whether there is the political will to enforce bans on cellphone use is another matter.
Bans on text messaging while driving illustrate the challenge. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have banned it, but in four of those states — Virginia, New York, Washington and Louisiana — the laws require that an officer have some other primary reason for stopping a vehicle before citing someone for cellphone use.
“That makes it impossible for police to enforce it effectively,” said Illinois state Sen. John Cullerton, a leading advocate for traffic safety. “It’s a convenient way to compromise and get bills passed in state legislatures.”
Hurley said the best first step for FocusDriven will be to get employers to ban the use of text messaging and cellphones when driving on company time.
