BORK

Cellphone use in motorvehicles

The dutch secretary of transportation has just released the umpteenth proposal to ban the use of handheld cellphones by the driver of a motorvehicle. I think it shows again that the mechanics of driver distraction are insufficiently understood, or that some people are in serious denial. Let's go into this step by step.

First of all the cellphone use side of it. I fully agree a handheld cellphoneisn't the most ideal implement to use in a motorvehicle. Still, it's no worse than many other devices, including but not limited to complicated radios, shavers, illogical dashboard layout, etc. A major issue to some is that it means drivers take one hand off the steering wheel. So what, I say, most drivers don't continuously keep both hands on the steering wheel while driving anyway. On the positive side, a handheld cellphone provides for a reasonable acoustical device-to-human coupling. A lot of handsfree kits I've used, both permanent-mounted and the portable "wires", require constant fiddling with volume, microphone placement, head position etc to enable at least some communication over the background noise, and soon start annoying the driver. A shouting, fiddling and annoyed driver might be more of a hazard than one happily using a handheld phone.

Second there is the human factors side of it. Sure, cellphones are a distraction, but so are radios, changing cds, childeren, fighting with the passenger, eating, reading a map, reading the newspaper, singing along with music, feeling around the rear footwell for a candybar, and last but not least fumbling around in your bag to dig up the handsfree cord, or taking your eyes off the road to dial a number on a cellphone mounted somewhere beside your knees. Some of the worst driving I've seen involved a driver fighting with his girlfriend (while swerving back and forth across 3 lanes) and a mother trying to discipline apparently unruly childeren in the back seat (swerving across 2.5 lanes at 80 mph). Banning cellphones is fighting a minor symptom of a larger ill, inattentive drivers. As such it is not particularly useful, and while temporariliy putting rose tinted glasses on a few do-gooders it solves nothing but takes attention away from the larger problem.

Third, and for this column last, is the social side of it. It is yet another practically unenforcable law. The chances of getting ticketed are virtually zero, encouraging people to just disregard it, and opening the floodgates to disregarding more laws. This could be thought of as a bad thing.

All in all, I think this is a strong contender for one of the most useless pieces of legislation to be proposed this year. It solves nothing, is practically unenforcable, and encourages people to just break it. A much better approach would be to either start enforcing the current rules on dangerous driving, which I admit aren't very stringent, or introduce a wider ranging "driving without due care and attention" law. Then all that remains is hiring and training another thousand police officers to patrol our highways and enforce it. Who knows, if they write enough tickets it might cost only ten times the damage it prevents.
 
Bram