Putting minds back onto the traffic at hand

Published 12:00 pm Saturday, December 29, 2007

A wise man once suggested that technology will

always outpace mankind’s capacity to do something useful with it.

Perhaps this explains the frequent misapplication of the

cellular telephone, which has induced in our populace a

particular madness by which even the most mundane,

pointless conversations seem to take on an urgency once reserved for red telephones in oval offices. Never mind emergencies or family exigencies; as often as not, we cell phone owners are nattering away about nothing, very loudly, in any and every public space.

While common courtesy may never recover, there is hope for common safety. Effective with the new year, Washington motorists will be prohibited from using their phones to send text messages while driving. It’s a welcome legislative response increasing popularity of “texting,” which, depending on your literary inclinations, is either the higher evolution or bastard stepchild of cellular technology.

Even a cursory scan of online news services suggests the tragic toll being wrought on our roadways by text tech. In 2006, a Utah man was charged with negligent driving when he veered into the oncoming lane and caused two highway deaths while sending and receiving text messages. Texting was also implicated in a head-on collision in New York this past June, in which five teenage girls – all recent high school graduates on the very threshold of their lives – were lost. Such examples are rapidly moving from anecdotal to actuarial, and underscore the fact that when you drive you’re either looking up at the road and paying attention to traffic, or you’re looking down at the phone and paying attention to, yes, the phone. There’s no in-between. (We know; we’ve tried it.)

As a secondary traffic offense under the new law, you won’t be pulled over for tapping out “CUL8R TOY XOXOXO” to your sweetie. But you will get a ticket if texting-induced errancy attracts police attention – through a sloppy lane change, a rolling stop, or other indications that a driver’s mind isn’t on the road where it belongs. Citation will carry a $124 fine.

Don’t like it? Well, Washington law goes further still this coming June, when the use of cell phones while driving will be prohibited entirely without the use of a “hands free” device such as a bluetooth headset. These are good laws, and overdue ones. Like the radio dial, the spilled latte, and the screaming kids in the back seat aren’t enough distraction? You need to be dialing a telephone or tapping out messages too?

It’s not like we don’t as a society recognize the risks to which we’re putting ourselves and others. A recent Harris Poll found that 91 percent of Americans consider texting while driving to be as dangerous as intoxication – even as 57 percent of respondents admitted they themselves did it. Add in the popularity of texting amongst younger generations – who by definition lack the experience and judgment of years behind the wheel – and the hazards are clear.

Of course, even with “hands free” device, drivers still run the risk of letting their concentration wander from the road to their conversation, suggesting that we won’t be truly safe until technologists roll out a “mind free” communication device.

Which, in one sense, you could say the cell phone

already is.