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New traffic violation: driving while distracted
KEEBLE McFARLANE keeble.mack@sympatico.ca
Saturday, October 31, 2009
The second half of the 20th century has brought us many benefits, chief of which is a considerable improvement in the standard of living for ordinary people in both
rich and poor countries. Although poverty, privation, malnutrition and poor health are widespread and affect countless millions, the lot of millions more is better than it ever was in all of
our history.
The nature of work has changed enormously - fewer people are engaged in bashing metal and screwing pieces of it together. Fewer till the soil, harvest the crops and process them into food and feedstocks for industry. Instead, most
of us nowadays work
with information - gathering, manipulating, distributing and storing it, using increasingly sophisticated electronic equipment.
The nature of leisure, too, has been transformed enormously. When my generation were children, we played with bats and balls, toy dolls and trucks, kites and skates, jacks and marbles and ran around outside burning off the food we vacuumed up
as quickly as our mothers placed it before us. Today's youngsters, on the other hand, play with electronic gizmos of all descriptions, and those whose parents can afford it spend hours in front of the computer.
But leisure devices are so cheap that even relatively poor people have MP3 players, CD changers and DVD boxes hooked to their television sets. The problem here is that instead of exercising, children and adults spend far too much time sitting instead of moving around vigorously.
While work these days may be more interesting and less taxing on the body, there is a serious downside. It's called "multitasking". Instead of concentrating on one thing at a time, today's worker has to deal simultaneously with several things, constantly shifting between computer windows to address each task at the same time as dealing with customers on the phone while sharing information with neighbouring co-workers.
Women say they have always been multitasking - looking after the infant, doing the laundry, keeping an eye on the supper on the stove while supervising the older children who are supposed to be doing their homework.
But the pace was nowhere as hectic as today's woman faces, juggling numerous tasks at the workplace while making sure everything is all right at home.
Now - combine this attitude towards work with the multiple distractions available to us for play, and what do you get? A mad rush to get through the day which has become several hours too short, then end up frustrated, unsatisfied and totally fatigued. But the practice is becoming more and more prevalent, with some quite undesirable or even tragic outcomes.
The Canadian province of Ontario has become the latest jurisdiction to try to tackle one of the most dangerous examples of this modern habit. Last Monday was the first day of new regulations which make it illegal to use a hand-held cellphone, personal digital device such as the BlackBerry, MP3 player or GPS tracking system while operating a motor vehicle. The police have been out on streets, roads and highways across the vast province on a campaign to educate drivers about the law until next February, when they'll begin issuing tickets with hefty fines and even the possibility of demerit points.
Hands-free is now the way to go, and equipment stores report that sales of Bluetooth devices have picked up with the introduction of the new law. These hands-free systems allow the driver to talk on the phone either through a headset or a piece of equipment mounted in the car. These can be either sophisticated factory-supplied gear which plays the caller's voice through the car's sound system or an aftermarket device typically mounted on the rear-view mirror or sun visor. The cheapest option is the headset which hooks up with the phone by radio waves. GPS terminals can be used, but must be permanently attached to the car and not hand-held.
You'd be surprised at the number of otherwise intelligent people who can't seem to get it that driving is an activity which requires total attention especially with today's sophisticated cars which can run much faster than before on today's increasingly busy roads. One man sent an email to CNN the other day stating that "I will use my cellphone whenever and wherever I want!" This may be a rousing declaration of freedom, but is a manifesto for obduracy and stupidity.
The cellphone, PDA and even the old car radio are not the only things which can distract a driver. A retired sergeant with the Ontario Provincial Police who now does regular traffic spots for a television station used to give reporters lists of stupid things he saw while patrolling one of the province's busiest super-highways. In one case, he pulled over a man in a pick-up truck eating a huge sandwich while using the backs of his hands to steer the vehicle while exceeding the 100 km/h speed limit by more than thirty kilometres an hour.
One woman was driving her sporty little car in and out of traffic well above the speed limit while putting on make-up, sipping a take-out coffee and munching on a muffin. A man was changing his clothes while his little son held the wheel, while another was sending a text message on his BlackBerry while drinking a Tim Hortons coffee and opening his mail. And a television reporter from one of the prairie provinces related a story this week of a couple who were caught in passionate lovemaking behind the wheel!
While some of these incidents may seem a trifle humorous, the potential results are by no means funny.
Serious injury, extensive damage and even death can be the outcome. There is the bizarre case of what happened to Steve Formhals of Texas. He was taxiing off from an airfield near the city of San Antonio when a woman drove her car directly across the runway. Her cellphone was glued to her ear as she chattered away, oblivious to the plane bearing down upon her.
The plane chewed its way through the car, the woman lost an ear while Formhals sustained serious injuries and his gorgeous home-built plane, costing more than US$100,000 and several years of work, was a total wreck. In another case just east of Toronto a couple of years ago, a freight train wiped out a car while the driver was chatting on a cellphone as he crossed the tracks, totally unaware of the oncoming train and the crossing signals.
Apart from the intuitive understanding that using a phone or hand-held device which requires you to look at it in order for it to work while navigating a busy city intersection or an unfamiliar country road, there are numerous studies showing just how seriously this can affect your driving. Some experts warn that hands-free chatting is the same as using a phone in your hand or scrunched up between your shoulder and your ear. It's the mental split between the two tasks that causes the trouble, they say.
Talking on the phone requires you to concentrate on what the caller is saying, taking your mind off the pedestrian who is about to step down off the curb. In fact, the experts say this increases your risk of being in a collision by four times - about the same as if you were legally drunk! So suppose you were talking to the passenger beside you? It's not quite the same, as that person sees the same things as you, and can pause while you make the necessary manoeuvre, picking up the conversation afterwards.
There was another recent related example of two airline pilots in the US who considerably overshot their destination because they were discussing work schedules while checking them on their laptop computers and didn't hear air traffic controllers calling.
The new law in Ontario means nine out of Canada's 10 provinces will by next year have legislation to curb the use of hand-held devices while driving.
Saskatchewan hopes to introduce a measure along these lines shortly and have it approved by the end of
the year.
These measures add to the old stand-bys of driving without due care and attention, careless, reckless and dangerous driving. So you can now be charged with impaired driving (drugs or alcohol) or distracted driving (under the influence of an electronic device).
It remains to be seen what kind of dent this will make in distracted driving, but seat-belt laws did dramatically reduce the number of traffic deaths after they were introduced in the 1970s. This is partly due to education about the risks, and partly from hefty fines and demerit points. The 18th-century French philosopher, Voltaire, commented thusly about the contentious execution of Admiral George Byng for neglect of duty in failing to relieve a garrison at Minorca under siege by the French: "Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres." "In this country (England), it is thought well to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others."
And with a different take on today's situation, a cartoon in my morning paper a few days ago featured a police patrolman telling a detective. "Ironically, the pedestrian he hit because he was on his cellphone was the guy he was on the phone with."
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