Photo: Justin Guariglia/Corbis
Joe Warmington paints a rather unpleasant portrait of the law of unintended consequences today in the Toronto Sun. Ontario’s cell phone law for drivers came into effect this past October, and became officially enforced on February 1. Other jurisdictions have implemented similar bans throughout the country, with British Columbia following suit recently as well.
The cell phone bans have been based on preliminary evidence that hand-held devices cause distraction for drivers, and the consequences in some cases have been fatal. During the first month of Ontario’s new law, the Ontario Provincial police have issued 470 fines worth $155.
Some officers were given to discretionary changes of heart, issuing at least as many warnings, with 468 drivers let off the hook. The GTA saw the most fines handed out in February, at 155. In Joe Warmington’s story, which takes place in the GTA, not only was the driver not spared the ticket, but she missed a funeral because of it.
Life-long criminal and menace to society at large, Robert Clifford Smith, with more than 100 serious criminal convictions to his name, was released from jail just two days before leading police on a chase that resulted in the collateral death of 26-year-old driver Sara Attayee on February 16.
Here’s what happened next:
Two days later the Kumars — Rekha, 28, Sonia and Sapna, 23, and Sangeeta, 19 — were among the mourners who went to Sara’s funeral at the Uma Nabawi Mosque in York Region and followed the crowd to the burial site.
“We live in Toronto so we got confused,” Rekha said.
Sonia got on her cellphone for directions, but the problem was the person at the other end speaks Farsi and was explaining in broken English. Sonia had trouble understanding so she handed the phone to her sister behind the wheel.
They all noticed the flashing lights.
The York Regional Police who stopped the sisters and detained them for 10 minutes, not only did not provide directions afterward, but they issued a $155 ticket. Then they missed the funeral of their deceased friend.
Joe Warmington makes a good point. Perhaps the province can explain the disconnect of priorities here. Menace to society versus menacing society. Worst of all, it may be that distracted driving laws don’t reduce the number of crashes at all.
The fact is that laws requiring hands-free devices for cell phones do NOTHING to improve public safety for the very simple reason that the problem of cell phones isn’t that you use your hands, it’s that you are distracted from driving.
I’ve said it before, but insisting that drivers use hands-free devices is like insisting they drink scotch instead of vodka while they drive. It’s moronic.
I heard an ad the other day for a product you can add to your vehicle that will let you control your sound system, GPS, cell phone and the like with voice commands. That’s an incredibly effective way to distract a driver, but the new law in BC is actually being used as a selling point for this device. Wonderful…
Oh for the love o’ Jazus….
“The fact is that laws requiring hands-free devices for cell phones do NOTHING to improve public safety ”
And just where is the data making this a “fact”? Since those laws have not been in effect here long enough for even the raw data to be collected, I suspect this “fact” is a mislabelled opinion.
I love this blog. Both the far-far right (including the owner) and the lefties make it up as they go….
Peter, if you did a little googling you’d see quite easily that I’m not making anything up.
There have been published studies on this. Furthermore, they aren’t done by looking at the effect of the laws. They’re done by simulated driving and testing reaction times. In other words, they are done by direct experiment.
As you say, the laws haven’t been in place long enough to measure results, but direct experiment is actually better. If the experiment showed that hands free devices were less distracting and didn’t cause slower reaction times, but the laws didn’t seem to reducing crashes, one could reasonably conclude that the problem is one of enforcement. Absent the experiment, one might reach the wrong conclusion.
But that’s not what the experiments show.
The experiments show that talking on the phone produces slower reaction times and more dangerous driving. This is equally the case for hand-held cell phones and ones with hands free devices. They are both equally bad.
I made the scotch/vodka comparison for a reason. Talking on the phone is bad for your driving. The BC law encourages the belief that hands free devices are “safe”. They are not.
Issachar is 100% right, the fact is when talking on the phone people have the tendency to project themselves mentally into the conversation.
Example.. Mary Jane is driving and talking to Alice, Alice is telling Mary Jane about her new outfit, Mary Jane see the road with her eyes but her brain is on the vision in her mind of Alice in her new outfit, Mary would have run over drunken Dave who was about to stagger onto the road but fortunately he was electrocuted by Toronto’s sidewalks and was knocked out before entering the crosswalk..
These stupid people should pull off the road and stop to talk on the phone. Anyone who drives knows that children, passengers, changing controls for music or whatever can distract drivers. Our roads are busier now and we all need our full attention to be directed to defensive driving.
Izzie:
Read carefully:
“laws requiring hands-free devices for cell phones do NOTHING to improve public safety”
How could you possibly know this? You’re arguing that the laws governing cell phones do not improve public safety, based on a premise that the logic behind them is flawed. It may be, or it may not. There is a world of difference between having a conversation with someone (whether they are in the vehicle or not) and taking your eyes off the road to dial a number, text message someone, etc.
This reminds me of the debate about seatbelts. Shortly after the laws took effect in Ontario, traffic fatalities _increased_. It was a statistical anomaly, but all the naysayers were out in full force saying “We told you so”.
There is NO reliable data yet on the effect of handsfree laws in Canada.
You seem to have missed the distinction. Show me a study that compares accident rates between drivers who converse with a passenger in the vehicle and those who converse with someone not in the vehicle on a handsfree cell phone and I might change my mind, but I haven’t been able to find any such study anywhere.
Peter,
This is nothing like seat belts. The studies have been done and the data DOES NOT support the hypothesis that hands free devices make for safer driving. The data shows this to be false.
The belief that hands free devices will improve driver safety is something that feels like it should be true, but the data proves it is not. Do you also believe that domestic violence increases on superbowl sunday?
Anyway, I decided to do some googling for you as you said you couldn’t find the study.
The reaction time study is being overshadowed at the moment because a new study was released in January and it tends to come up in the results. That one actually used insurance data rather than measuring reaction time. http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-10444717-266.html
But I originally was talking about studies that looked at reaction times, so without further ado…
University of Utah: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/01/030129080944.htm
You asked me to show you a study that compares drivers conversing with passengers and ones conversing on a cell phone. The Utah research does that.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2006-08-13-cell-car_x.htm
That was presented to the American Psychological Association in 2006, but research on the subject goes back to 2001 as you can see in the first link.
Peter, you are arguing for a position that is flatly contradicted by the available evidence.
Hmmm…assuming those media reports accurately report the substance of the study (a big if, I might add), it would appear you are right.
Hey, I was as surprised as you are. I might be skeptical except that I originally heard about it from a Doc who I believe told me that she read about it in one of her medical journals.
It does seem rather obvious that taking your hand off the wheel to hold a phone should negatively affect your driving. It’s incredibly surprising that it doesn’t.
The other part of the BC law that I find absolutely ridiculous is the ban on skipping to the next song on your iPod while you drive. I don’t know of any study on this, but I seriously doubt that skipping to the next song on my iPod is more dangerous than skipping to the next song on a CD. Frankly the whole thing strikes me as an incredibly ill conceived law.
I also can’t see how the iPod part can be enforced AT ALL. Can anyone else? What sense does it make to enact a law that cannot be enforced?
“What sense does it make to enact a law that cannot be enforced?”
That’s another good objection to outlawing cell phone use altogether while driving. No police officer would be able to tell that someone was wearing a handsfree set from outside of the vehicle. They make ‘em small enough to fit inside your ear these days.
Seems to me the current laws are a good compromise between an unenforceable ban, and ignoring the problem altogether.
And, BTW, I turn that Satan-spawned bit of technology OFF when I drive…and as often as possible any other time. I HATE cell phones.
No Peter, it’s not a good compromise because it encourages dangerous behaviour.
Rather than tell people that driving while on the phone is dangerous they’re sending the opposite message that driving on the phone is safe if you use this useless prophylactic.
Should we tell people to carefully wash their hypodermic needles before their share them?