Senator Offers Federal Legislation That Would Tie Highway Funding to Laws Against Texting While Driving

Okay. Pick a term. Déjà Vu. I told you so. It’s as predicted. Here we go again.

It started on Tuesday of this week when Virginia Tech’s Transportation Institute released its analysis of data collected from two real-world studies involving long-haul truckers. If the truck driver is reading or sending a text message on his cell phone while driving, the odds are twenty-three (23) times higher that he will be involved in an accident.

Data collected by one of five video cameras mounted in the cab of the fifty-five trucks involved in the study revealed that before each recorded crash or near crash, the driver’s eyes were diverted from the roadway for an average of five seconds. Dr. Rich Hanowski, who oversaw the study, said, “If you’re not watching the road for almost five seconds, it’s a crash waiting to happen.” Tom Dingus, director of the Virginia Tech institute, said, “You should never do this. It should be illegal.”

That message was received loud and clear in Washington and the reaction was swift. Sen. Charles Schumer, Democrat from New York, introduced a bill on Wednesday that would require states to pass a bill within two years that makes texting while driving illegal or face a twenty-five percent (25%) reduction in annual federal highway funding.

Senator Schumer said, "When drivers have their eyes on their cell phones instead of the road, the results can be dangerous and even deadly.” The senator was also quoted as saying, “Get your hands off your cell phones and Blackberries and back on the wheel. The risks are too great to tolerate this bad habit anymore.” The proposed bill has the additional backing of Senate Democrats Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, and Kay Hagan of North Carolina.

However, reaction to the proposed federal legislation was swift. In an Associated Press article published Wednesday, the chairman of The Governors Highway Safety Association, Vernon Betkey Jr., was quoted as saying "Highway safety laws are only effective if they can be enforced and if the public believes they will be ticketed for not complying. To date, that has not been the case with many cell phone restrictions."

Another GHSA spokesman, Jonathan Adkins, was quoted in a New York Times article on Wednesday. “We oppose sanctioning states since there is not yet a proven effective method for enforcing a texting or cell phone ban.” However, the GHSA, which supposedly represents highway safety agencies from all states, already has fourteen state members who have already passed bans on texting while operating a motor vehicle.

To erase any doubt that the officials of the GHSA are drawing a line in the sand against the proposed federal legislation, a statement posted on the association’s web site is entitled, “To Ban or Not to Ban? Solutions to Cell Phone Use and Driving Require More Research and Thoughtful Analysis.”

They apparently didn’t get Senator Schumer’s message when he said, “We’re not really sure why a study is required to know that taking your eyes off the road and hands off the wheel for extended periods is a bad idea.”

All of the actions and reactions during the week are echoes of the same arguments and posturing that took place when the threatened loss of federal highway funds was used to force states to pass laws requiring the use of seat belts and raise the drinking age to twenty-one. There is no reason to think the current debate will not end in the same manner.

But where does all this leave the American motoring public while the bureaucrats and politicians argue and debate the issue? The next time you are traveling on the interstate and see the driver of a tractor-trailer rig with a cell phone in his hand, pray that he is merely talking instead of using the text function on his phone.

However, if you can see the phone in the driver’s hands, it may be too late. At 60mph, slower than the speed on most interstates, the truck will be covering some 88 feet every second the driver’s eyes are not on the road ahead.

The Old Cobbler could not resist adding this Associated Press story and picture.

Police: Texting, talking NY trucker hits car, pool
LOCKPORT, N.Y. – Police say a western New York tow truck driver was texting on one cell phone while talking on another when he slammed into a car and crashed into a swimming pool.
Niagara County sheriff's deputies say 25-year-old Nicholas Sparks of Burt admitted he was texting and talking when his flatbed truck hit the car Wednesday morning in Lockport, which is outside Buffalo.
The truck then crashed through a fence and sideswiped a house before rolling into an in-ground pool.
Police say the 68-year-old woman driving the car suffered head injuries and was in good condition. Her 8-year-old niece suffered minor injuries.
Sparks was charged with reckless driving, talking on a cell phone and following too closely. It couldn't be determined Thursday whether he has a lawyer

Cell Phone Usage While Driving is Growing Subject in National Media

Driving Distractions?”

David Strayer, a professor at University of Utah and a leading researcher in the field of distracted driving, had this to say in a recent New York Times article. "We've spent billions on air bags, antilock brakes, better steering, safer cars and roads, but the number of fatalities has remained constant. Our return on investments for those billions is zero. And that's because we're using devices in our cars."

Devices?

The driver of today’s automobile can be surrounded by a multitude of devices, many of which contribute little or nothing to the concept of safe driving. It has taken seventy-nine years to reach this point. In 1930, Paul Galvin, an engineer from Chicago, equipped his Studebaker with a radio and drove it to the Radio Manufacturer’s show in New Jersey. He parked his car at the entrance to the Atlantic City pier, turned up the volume and let the public hear what was possible.

The response was overwhelming. Galvin returned to Chicago with enough orders for his radio that a new manufacturing company was formed. He wanted a name more pizzazz than Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. The name selected was Motorola.

The automotive radio was an after-market item until 1938 when General Motors offered a radio as a factory option on its Buicks. They were strictly AM until Blaupunkt, a German radio manufacturer, became the first to offer an FM receiver in 1952.

The driving public’s desire for music led Motorola to develop a player that would handle 45-rpm records, first fitted in some Chrysler models in 1956. Things took a quantum leap in the 1960s when Phillips introduced the compact cassette and Lear the eight-track cartridge. Audio books quickly became an option for listening while driving.

In the early 1990s, the U.S. Air Force launched the first GPS satellite. It was a program that quickly became demilitarized. A slew of companies jumped into the competition to build GPS units in automobiles. Again it was General Motors, which in 1995, was the first manufacturer to offer a GPS unit as a factory option on some Oldsmobile models.

Paralleling this growth in automotive-mounted devices was the development of portable telephones. The first “portable phone call” was made in 1973 when a Motorola employee in Chicago called the head of research at AT&T Bell Labs while the latter was walking along a street in New York City. Cell phones made their public debut in 1977. It was a trial run in Chicago, beginning with 2,000 customers.

The year 1985 was the first year numbers were assembled to give an overall picture of cell phone usage in the United States. That year there were 340,213 cell phones compared to 157,000,000 motor vehicles. By 2006, cell phones outnumbered registered motor vehicles: 262,000,000 to 250,851,833. And the result is that cell phone usage while driving has become the elephant in America’s living room, and the poster boy for a new wave of thinking: Driving distractions.

The collective weight of scientific studies and the cold statistics of vehicle accidents have pushed things to the point that the danger of cell phone usage while driving can no longer be ignored. Together they are building a mountain of evidence that proves talking on a cell phone while driving is as great a danger to the motoring public as driving while legally intoxicated.

One final thought to those who say that cell phone usage while driving has become such an integral part of the motoring public that no amount of legislation will out law it. Using the same path that brought us other federally mandated safety standards for American automobiles, the problem can be eliminated with one piece of legislation.

That same computer under the hood that controls almost all of the functions on today’s vehicles needs only one more circuit added to block cell phone signals within the automobile. All it will take is for the government to tell the automakers, “Install that circuit.”

AFRAID, written by “Jack Kilborn,” Created a Troubling Concern

Have you ever read a book that would not go away? Two weeks after having absorbed the last sentence in the last chapter, and moved on to other authors, other stories, that one book keeps echoing in your brain?

The Old Cobbler is talking about a book written by J. A. Konrath, an author about whom I have no qualms using wordsmith to describe his writing talent. Beyond that, he represents the two essential qualities that it takes to succeed at writing novels in today’s world.

The man understands persistence. His 500 plus rejections prove that. The man understands promotion. The miles he has driven on book tours, the bookstores he has visited, and the work he has done via the Internet, all speak for themselves.

I found his mixology series, as I have come to call them, featuring Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels of the Chicago Police Department, to be very enjoyable reads. These books, to use an old line, are the complete package.

It was the enjoyment of these six books that led me to buy AFRAID, which Konrath wrote under the name Jack Kilborn. Nothing was known about the story in AFRAID when the book was bought.

Knowing who wrote the book, a quick peek at the back cover, seeing the comment, “An absolute must read for anyone who loves the adrenaline rush of a shocking story with style, speed, and savage grace,” was enough for me.

I did not get the promised adrenaline rush from reading the book. The concept of soldiers whose skills are enhanced via biochemical engineering and technology to the point they become perfect, cold robotic killers is not new.

What I did get from the book is a though that is for me very disturbing. It’s a personal thing, and needs maybe a bit of explanation. When I left the news reporting business, it was for economic reasons. I had a family to support.

But leaving the business also gave me a sense of relief in that I was walking away from a life that at times put me face-to-face with acts of violence. And as I came to learn during those years, there are two types of violence.

There is the violence of the tragic accident. In the days before seat belts, a young mother parked her car on a hillside and opened the driver’s door. The trim on the cuff of her winter coat sleeve became entangled in the door handle. The weight of the door swinging open pulled her backward from the vehicle seat. The base of her skull hit a concrete curb. She was fatally injured.

There is the violence is that inflicted by one human on another, or on an animal. A high school boy poured gas on a cat and set it on fire. The reason given afterwards for this act was as unjustifiable as the act was savage and brutal. The boy said he simply wanted to know how fast and far a burning cat could run.

Reading AFRAID was the first book in nearly half a century that brought back a memory of that unjustifiable act of violence and brutality. I did not find the book to be an adrenaline rush. I found it to be totally repulsive.

I read the entire book, hoping that by the end, there would be a reason that gave some acceptable level of justification for the violence and brutality. For me, it was not there. It was the burning cat, redux.

I cannot criticize Konrath for writing this book. The man has made the commitment to writing novels that a publisher will buy. I cannot criticize the imprints that published the book. They print what they believe the public will buy.

That leaves the people that bought the book, including The Old Cobbler. I want very much to believe that others bought the book based the same type of criteria, the same level of ignorance that I did. The alternative to this is what leaves me with such a disturbing concern.

That is the idea that there is a sufficient number of folks in this country that buy, read and enjoy the type of baseless, unjustifiable violence depicted in AFRAID to make this type of novel a viable part of the book publishing industry.

If AFRAID proves to be an acceptable seller, as does a second book in this "genre" planned by Konrath, in which he promises more “chilling horror,” the books will make a far more chilling statement about our society than they do about the author or the imprint that publishes them.