A (Somewhat Wordy) Public Service Announcement

Before I moved to Manhattan, I rushed to get everywhere. I sped and stressed to avoid being late to work or to dinner or to the doctor. I called people and sent text messages from my phone so they'd know exactly where I was on the highway. I worried about traffic jams and slow drivers and making "good time." And then I moved to one of the largest cities in the world, and suddenly I had no control over my commute. I took the subway, which meant depending on a flawed network of trains and people to get me where I needed to go. Sometimes my train would be held underground for half an hour without explanation. Sometimes it would switch to another track and I'd end up in the wrong neighborhood. Sometimes the train would skip my stop. Sometimes my subway line would be temporarily shut down due to "police activity." And on one very special rainy day, my train didn't run at all. I lost a good deal of control of my ability to get places on time. And since cell phones don't work in the subway, there was never any way to call my employer or husband or friend or doctor to tell them I would be running late. Once I realized it was out of my hands, I calmed down. If I were meeting someone, I would call before I left to make sure they knew I was on my way. If I didn't arrive, they assumed I had gotten held up by some aspect of the city's public transportation. It was no big deal. The point is, when you live in a place like New York, you realize how insignificant these little things are. You discover very quickly that things do not shut down if you are late, that your friends will forgive you for missing happy hour, and that having to delay a conversation until you get home is really no big deal.

One of the pet peeves that Xander and I share is people talking or texting on their cell phones while driving. Of course this bothers us most when we are the passengers in the car, but we notice other people doing it more often as pedestrians in a city. There have been numerous incidents in which we've been nearly run over by people on cell phones. Normally, I don't care what other people do with their free moments. But when it means someone I love or I might die, then I mind a whole lot.

Now, the argument everyone we know who texts or talks on the cell phone while driving is that he/she is a good driver and is therefore able to talk and drive. It's the other people that should not do it. Yet it turns out that it doesn't matter how pristine your driving record is, numerous studies show that using a cell phone significantly impairs your driving abilities, regardless of whether or not you use a hands-free device. They have also indicated that simply talking to another passenger in the car does not pose the same risk, which is another common argument made. "It's no different than talking to someone in the car with you," people have said. Not true, it turns out.

Whatever your arguments on this subject may have been in the past, it seems obvious to me that it's just not worth the risk. Maybe the studies are flawed. Maybe you really are the one driver in the world who is able to talk or text on your cell phone without having your driving abilities impaired. Maybe your life sucks and you don't care if you're killed in a car accident, but some of us value our lives and would prefer to keep them. If you need to make a call, do it before you leave. If you're on the road, whatever you have to say can wait. If it can't, do yourself and all of us the favor of pulling over.

I think we could all agree that learning to let go of the feeling that all of our desires are immediate, that we need to say what we have to say right now, is a valuable lesson that extends beyond time spent commuting. I do not care who you are or what your job is, what you have to say is not nearly as important as you think it is. The world will not explode if you wait a few minutes or an hour to make that phone call. I promise. If I am wrong and the world does explode because you were driving at death speed down the interstate and therefore did not phone the President to warn him of nuclear missiles having been fired at Earth from an alien spacecraft or some such, you can hold me personally accountable.

There have been numerous articles written in the last few months on this very subject, including one very accessible and interesting one in the New York Times. You can read it here, and from the bottom of that page you can find links to related articles and some of the studies. These are a few of the quotes we found most interesting:

“When we ask people to identify the most dangerous distraction on the highway today, about half — correctly — identify cellphones,” said Bill Windsor, associate vice president for safety at Nationwide. “But they think others are dangerous, not themselves.” [Windsor] and others who favor restrictions say drivers regularly make what amount to ill-informed analyses of cost-benefit tradeoffs, often deciding that the value of constant communication outweighs any risks...

Some scientists say this argument is flawed. “We’ve spent billions on air bags, anti-lock brakes, better steering, safer cars and roads, but the number of fatalities has remained constant,” said David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah and a leading researcher in the field of distracted driving. “Our return on investment for those billions is zero,” he added. “And that’s because we’re using devices in our cars.”

The highway safety administration estimates that drivers using a hand-held device are at 1.3 times greater risk of a crash or near crash, and at three times the risk when dialing, compared with others who are simply driving. The agency based its conclusions on research from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which placed cameras inside cars to monitor drivers for more than a year. The study found cellphones to be the most common cause of driver distraction...

Research also shows that drivers conversing with fellow passengers do not present the same danger, because adult riders help keep drivers alert and point out dangerous conditions and tend to talk less in heavy traffic or hazardous weather...

Scientists are grappling, too, with perhaps the broadest question hanging over the phenomenon of distracted driving: Why do people, knowing the risk, continue to talk while driving? The answer, they say, is partly the intense social pressures to stay in touch and always be available to friends and colleagues. And there also is the neurological response of multitaskers. They show signs of addiction — to their gadgets...

The New York Times has also posted a game to demonstrate the kind of impairment one can experience while texting. Of course it's a game, it's not at all an accurate representation of driving, but the point is a good one.