CHP study finds cell phone use risky business ?

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. the groundbreaking CHP review -- the first to compare the rate of California accidents caused by cell phone yakking with other risky driving habits -- has a state lawmaker saying cell phones are a big enough danger to justify legislation requiring drivers to use hands-free equipment. "At some point, common sense and daily observation ought to tell us there is a problem," said Assemblyman Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, who is making his third run at passing a bill requiring drivers to use hands-free phone gear.

A. While cell-phone-wielding drivers may be the most visible -- and despised -- of motoring hazards, listening to the radio or compact disc player was a close second, contributing to 9 percent of inattention accidents. Next came distracting children (4 percent), eating (3 percent) and reading (2 percent). Combing hair, picking teeth and other forms of personal hygiene primping were tied at the bottom with being disoriented by pets or smoking (1 percent). In a frightening indication of the myriad things -- besides driving -- that fill the minds of multitasking California motorists, a whopping 67 percent of distraction wrecks were lumped under the "other" category, including: daydreaming, visual distractions, reading street signs and just "general inattention." Studies by Montana, Minnesota and Oklahoma officials have also found that cell phone use contributes to less than 1 percent of all crashes. Officials in those states, as well as accident researchers and Simitian, think statistics tend to understate the cell phone risk. Harvard University researcher Joshua Cohen says scientists are wary of using police report numbers because "people might not be terribly interested in revealing they were on the phone when the crash occurred." Cohen said his research finds the use of cell phones while driving increases the crash rate by 6 percent. University of Utah researcher David Strayer has found no difference in talking on either handheld or hands-free cell phones. Both cause what he and other research team members dubbed "inattention blindness" that can slow a driver's reaction time by 10 to 30 percent. "Either way, you go into a 'cell phone zone' where you're not processing the information in front of you," he said. Simitian criticized the CHP study methodology, saying it tended to discount cell phone use as a contributing factor to other causes such as speed or following too closely. But he said the CHP report and other studies add to "a growing mountain of evidence" about cell phone driving hazards. The CHP study shies away from suggesting a ban on cell phone use by drivers, citing statistics that music listening contributes to nearly as many collisions.

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