Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > September > 22
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Digital Contrarian: texting while driving
A few years ago, a tech company sent me a new phone to try out for a review. It was shiny and new, with some of the next-gen features we take for granted today like the ability to play video and surf the Web.
I was so excited to try the phone out that I pulled it out of the box and started playing with it even as I was getting ready for my long commute home. I reversed my car out of its parking space in the American-Statesman lot and began rolling toward the Riverside Drive exit.
I don’t remember if I was logging in to Gmail or trying to get to a Web site on the tiny screen’s Web browser, but I do remember my hand locked in that digital/numerical clutch, punching up letters on the keypad. My eyes were firmly fixed on the screen as I typed on the unfamiliar interface. My driving slowed and slowed until I suddenly stopped; something caught my attention as it appeared my peripheral vision.
A black car’s bumper was inches from mine. My Prius was wedged awkwardly in a unnatural diagonal, having drifted from my unmarked side of the road. The driver in the black car was staring at me angrily, jaw dropped. They obviously couldn’t believe what had almost happened. Neither could I. I put the phone down in the passenger seat and drove away, my hands shaking all the way home.
I learned my lesson, but I wish I could say it was the last time I ever used a cell phone while driving. I have an iPhone now and on my nearly one-hour commute I’ve given in to the temptation to glance at the screen when the phone buzzed an incoming text message or e-mail subject line. But I don’t text and drive; I like to think I’m pretty coordinated, but even the time it takes to open up an iPhone app is long enough to drift out of your lane when you’re driving at 70 mph down IH-35. It’s hard, sitting for so long, disconnected, when the entire world of Twitter and RSS feeds is right at your fingertips. But it’s one of the rare instances where the risks are truly life or death.
Texting and driving is dumb, pure and simple. It’s a hard thing to rationalize, especially when you’ve already had a near-miss like I have.
When the City of Austin moved to ban texting while driving, it was surprising to see people arguing against it not because it’s dangerous (clearly, it is), but on a principle of supposed civil liberties, as if the Founding Fathers someone wanted us to crash into each other at high speeds as an expression of our hard-earned freedoms.
One Statesman story commenter wrote:
“If its not texting then the people who are irresponsible drivers will do something else thats (sic) dangerous, maybe they will cook pankakes (sic) on a portable cooker on the way to work, are we going to ban Portable cookers?”
Right. Because if we ban texting, a good substitute for information gratification will be the emerging craze of making ham and eggs lighter-adapter-powered car griddles. Good argument.
The parallel argument that applying makeup, fiddling with the radio or arguing with your kids is just as distracting as texting has a certain logic to it. But when I’m driving on 35 and see someone drifting off their lane, invariably it’s someone with a cell phone stuck to the side of their face or with the phone in their hand, not someone with a mascara tube or a hand stretched out to adjust a volume knob.
A more stunning point represented in two other Statesman story comments was that only the untalented pose a danger and that texting could actually improve your driving because driving texters are concentrating harder on what they’re doing:
“For those of us who can use our phones and you would never know because it does not affect our driving, we might represent the minority. But we will be punished along with all of the mindless masses out there who can not use their phones and drive.”
“Well, here’s one way - studies have shown that people that are talking on their cell phone while driving, drive slower and change lanes less often. Who knows, maybe DWT actually makes us drive safer???”
Right study, wrong conclusion. The University of Utah study from last year actually says that cell phone users can actually cause traffic congestion, which is another danger they pose.
One popular Austin blog, Grits for Breakfast, expressed not only skepticism about the the proposed Austin law, but the idea that because the practice has become part of “People’s routine life habits” that a law against it is unenforceable. The blog’s author Scott Henson wrote:
“Though I’m lucky enough to live close to downtown, I know a lot of Austin commuters who use their Blackberry that way, and it’s not as though the city has provided adequate mass transit to give those folks other options.”
Excusing people’s dangerous driving habits because there’s a lack of mass transit is like saying that neglecting a child is permissible because the state doesn’t provide affordable childcare programs.
I’m usually happy to argue the opposing view on a tech policy topic and play devil’s advocate, but I spend enough time on the road every week to see how things are actually playing out. People are driving erratically and putting us all in danger, cell phone in hand, fingers texting.
If there’s to be any debate, it should be about ways to make it stop, not whether it should be stopped at all.
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