On the Road
by: Bill Oetinger 3/1/2010
Spring Cleaning, Part 1
This is my second beginning to this column. When I first began it, I had intended it to be a follow-up to a few different topics from past columns. (Hence, the Spring Cleaning header: airing out my journalistic house and sweeping all the fusty old dust bunnies out the door.) But after I got into the first item on my list of old topics, I decided that first item would have to stand alone…one topic; one column. Next month, I will do Spring Cleaning, Part 2, and as I already have it almost all written, I know I can dispense with all those other dust bunnies in one batch. For now, though, just this one topic.
I do these follow-up columns every so often. The last one was called More Loose Ends and appeared in February, 2009, just over a year ago. In that column, I harkened back to another column from another year earlier called Traffic safety: a culture of complacent incompetence. It was all about the poor skill sets of drivers, or in particular, their poor attention spans while driving, a state made worse by all their attempts at multi-tasking behind the wheel: fiddling with the CD player, eating, putting on make-up, etc. The Loose Ends item was in particular focused on cell phone use and texting, perhaps the biggest subset of driver distractions these days.
I have been prompted to cough up this hairball one more time because of some other articles I've seen lately. One I take as a slight bit of good news: Peter Egan, the esteemed columnist for Road & Track magazine, has devoted his March, 2010 column to the topic. Under the heading, Hang Up and Drive, he lays down a heavy-duty rant against the use of cells while driving, and further, against the myriad other attention-eroding behaviors drivers get into lately, including messing about with their on-board GPS mapping apps while doodling down the road.
I don't have any stats to prove this--circulation numbers, for instance--but I am still willing to assert that Road & Track is the premier automotive-enthusiast periodical in this country and possibly in the world, and further, that Peter Egan is the premier columnist at that publication. Others might debate those points, but no one would argue that he is not a significant, highly respected, much admired, and widely read writer in the that field. That being the case, it is immensely gratifying to see him adding his two cents' worth to the call to ban or curtail cell phone use, and, in general, to bleeping pay attention to the task of driving while engaged in it. I encourage you to read his column.
In addition to being a professional car guy, Egan is also a cyclist and motorcyclist, and it was a near-death close call on his Triumph--nearly being taken out by a cell-phone zombie--that prompted this recent venting. His style is normally light-hearted and humorous, with a fairly generous dollop of charity directed at those with whom he disagrees. But in this case, his charity is stretched thin: he is seriously pissed off…nothing very humorous about it. And that is as it should be. Driver distractions, with cells at the top of the list, are a huge problem these days, and it's only getting worse.
Which brings me to the next article on this topic, picked up from the LA Times, under this headline: "Study: Cell ban hasn't cut accidents." A new study from the Highway Loss Data Institute claims that the rate of crashes in California has not significantly changed since hand-held cell phone use was banned by law in 2008, and that California's crash rates mirror those of Arizona and Nevada, which don't have cell phone bans. So far, so good: they recorded the data and passed it along. I don't dispute their numbers. But I am suggesting they leaped to a specious conclusion when analyzing those numbers.
They assert that the fact that the crash rate has not changed much since the ban went into effect indicates that using cell phones is not the distraction the experts claimed it was. Excuse me? That sounds like the sort of conclusion you would expect them to propose had the study been funded by the cell phone industry. An equally compelling conclusion might be that the ban hasn't worked because no one is obeying it! Everyone but a blind man can see that hand-held cell phone use is still rampant in California. You cannot ride or drive two blocks in any urban or suburban setting and fail to see someone on the phone in every third vehicle you pass. Further, even if some cell users have switched to hands-free devices, there is a substantial body of evidence to suggest that these are only slightly less likely to distract you while driving. Having one hand off the wheel to hold the phone is a small part of the problem; it's simply the fact of being on the phone at all that is the real problem. Anything that distracts drivers from their core task is a danger.
A personal aside: I hit a curb the other day, driving my Honda. I was ejecting a CD. Simple little task. Took my eyes off the road ever-so-briefly. Just a one or two-second lapse of attention and BLAM!…smacked that sucker hard enough I thought I'd damaged the wheel rim. I hadn't, and no harm done. But what if a cyclist or a mother pushing a baby stroller had been where that curb was at that exact moment? It's fair to say that, had I seen a cyclist or a pedestrian ahead, I would not have chosen that moment to be fiddling with my CD player. But still, it's our capacity for dealing with the unexpected that's in question here. It's never an ideal world out on the road. We have to be ready to make split-second decisions and course corrections at any time, and any of that time spent multi-tasking is time in which some unexpected crisis can arise. My little curb biff was a vivid and chastening reminder to me of how quickly these incidents can happen.
While I was at the R&T website getting the link for Egan's column, I noticed a second column by another of their senior writers, Dennis Siminaitis, on the subject of the bans on texting-while-driving that are being implemented in more states all the time. He makes all the same observations that Egan makes about multi-tasking, and he cites a few more studies with the research to back them up. He mentions a study conducted recently at Stanford that shows conclusively that multi-taskers are less efficient, less productive, and less attentive than people focused on one job at a time. (The old saying, "jack of all trades and master of none" seems apt.) Significantly, the multi-taskers in the study all believe they are getting more accomplished and being more efficient with their time…are generally more adept. They do not recognize that they are actually doing ALL their tasks badly. The fact of this delusional belief in their versatile omniscience is a major factor in this issue: the ban on cell phone use and texting is not meant for them; they're on top of it; they can manage!
My own brother, whom I greatly respect as an intelligent, responsible adult, is in this crowd. He insists he can use his phone while driving and still be 100% on-task with the driving. He works in tech support and spends a lot time driving around from client to client, juggling his schedule and movements on the fly. For him, having instant and constant connectivity is simply part of the job description. I have no doubt my bro is closer to the responsible end of this spectrum than most; that when he is on the phone or glancing at his schedule on his I-Phone, he really is watching the road (most of the time). He is not one of the really bad ones: texting, eating, reprogramming MapQuest, and adjusting the balance on his sound system, all at the same time and all while jamming at 70-mph down a crowded freeway in an three-ton time bomb. However, for all his good intentions and best attention, my brother is still kidding himself if he doesn't admit he's at least marginally impaired while trying to drive and do anything else at the same time.
Siminaitis also has posted, at the bottom of his column, a 4-minute video made in the UK to illustrate the dangers of texting-while-driving. It could just as well be about dialing up your phone or any number of other tasks we engage in while we should be driving. The video has been available on YouTube for awhile and has had quite a lot of publicity. Maybe you've already seen it. My wife says she saw it last summer and that she tried to get me to watch it, but I was too busy at the time to take the few minutes needed. Now I have seen it.
It's a hard little video to watch. It involves a car crash. It's not all that gory. Any number of video games and action movies will be far more graphic, and this certainly could have been much more grisly and still would not have exaggerated the potential carnage of such a crash. But it's very well done, and it slams its message home with all the force of a head-on collision. A couple of years ago, in one of these columns, I mentioned that my 20-something daughter had nearly been killed in a head-on with a drunken driver in South Africa. Seeing this little film brought that all back to me so forcefully… Drunken drivers…texting teens…cell phone space cadets…the results are all the same.
Perhaps I am preaching to the converted here about all these distractions-while-driving. I sincerely hope so. But if you are still among the multitudes who think it's okay to do two (or three) things at once while driving, I challenge you to watch this video: if it doesn't at least make you stop and think about it, then I don't know what laws or public peer pressure can reach you.
The State legislator who pushed through the original ban on cell phones and texting in California is at it again. He is proposing substantial increases in the fines for first and second offenses. He is also proposing adding cycling to the law: no talking on your phone while riding. I'm all for it. People do it all the time on club rides now. Hey, it's great to have a phone there when we have a crash on a remote country road, but we do not need folks yakking away in the middle of the pace lines. Let the voice mail pick it up and check the message at the next rest stop.
Finally, did you see the news item about the trucker who crashed his big rig into a car, killing a woman, while he was watching porn on his lap top? He has just been sentenced to a very long prison term, which will still end up being shorter than the infinitely long death sentence the blameless woman got. Do we need to wonder what else this clown was doing while driving an 18-wheeler and watching porn? Kind of gives a whole new meaning to the term multi-tasking, doesn't it?
(This is a big part of the reason I wear a mirror when I ride. I don't give a rat's ass if it looks dorky. When I look back, I want to see the "body language" of the vehicles coming up behind me. If one of them appears erratic in its movements, I go on red alert. Given the number of drivers out there who are impaired, either by the use of alcohol or by some form of distraction, it only makes sense to employ this early warning radar to spot the free-range loonies.)
So there you go…one topic down and a few more to go, next month. If you watch that little texting-while-driving video, you may understand why I didn't feel like moving on to other topics afterward. I'm sorry this was not a happy-talk column about the zesty, healthful, frisky aspects of cycling, or about the beautiful world through which we ride our bikes. Those are the columns I love to write. But every so often, the world being the way it is, I have to visit the dark side and deal with some of this garbage.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net