Editorial: The truth we must still confront about distracted driving
The facts and evidence almost could not be any clearer:
• Using a hand-held cellphone while driving is unsafe, even deadly.
• Using a hand-held cellphone while driving is illegal.
• Many drivers are indifferent to both conclusions.
By many, we mean nearly two a minute at the major suburban intersections where contingents of Daily Herald editors, reporters and photographers posted themselves one bright late-October morning to chart adherence to the year-old state law forbidding use of a hand-held device while driving.
And that's just the number we caught at that particular time and in these particular places.
The troubling conclusion to draw from our research is that at some point during the day, all across the vast reaches of the suburbs, untold numbers of drivers believe they can beat the odds or the system and sneak in that one phone call, that one text or that one email that just could not wait.
Our research was unscientific, of course, but it is persuasive nonetheless, and it emphasizes the impression that the driving public continues to believe that, if distracted driving is a hazard, it is someone else's problem.
I won't be affected while I make this quick call, drivers appear to be saying.
I won't cause an accident by just checking to see who texted me.
I can look at my phone's GPS for just a second to make sure I'm following the directions.
If a cellphone causes an accident, it will be because of some other driver less cautious, less capable than me.
These are, in all too many cases, famous last words, words that lead to more than 3,200 deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries a year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. By some accounts, more accidents are caused by drivers impaired by distractions than by those impaired by alcohol or drugs.
The numbers ought to be alarming, and if they did indeed involve drugs or alcohol or some other traditionally acknowledged risky behavior, society would never stand for them. Unfortunately, society has yet to fully digest them, and as a result, the practice continues virtually undiminished.
Not that we aren't trying. Illinois has implemented a tough new law against cellphone use behind the wheel, schools are doing more to try to educate young drivers about the dangers and even cellphone companies themselves have launched educational initiatives designed to increase public awareness about the dangers of what some call "intexticated" driving.
Clearly, though. more is needed. Over the next two days, we'll share some ideas for shaping and enforcing laws and for implementing technological advances that could help address the dangerous combination of driving and electronic devices.
That such reflections are a matter of life and death is beyond argument. But they all begin with an acknowledgment that using devices while driving is a dangerous behavior not just for other drivers, but for each of us. It's not enough that we've passed some laws to fight distracted driving. Now, each of us still has to acknowledge the seriousness of the reasoning for those laws and to accept that they also apply to us.