Biking and texting: What could possibly go wrong?
It did my head in to see something so dumb. What a mug.
OPINION: It was mid-morning when I rode the KTM 1190 into Wellington. A great time for motorcycling because the motorway is pretty much empty of tin tops, so you can enjoy the curving descent down the Ngauranga Gorge.
Then the harbour vista of the coolest little capital in the world opens as SH1 merges with SH2.
Up ahead was a solo rider on a Suzuki GN250 – pretty much the go-to motorcycle for new bikers.
Cheap, dependable and with a low seat height; the GN has been unchanged for years and has taught thousands of bikers the basics of throttle, brake and clutch.
But this GN wasn’t looking too flash. Already in the left lane, it was slowing down and drifting a little.
Out of fuel perhaps.? No backfiring so perhaps not fuel at all, but an electrical problem?
Older Suzuki electrics can be a bit dodgy, so that was probably it.
Then I noticed the rider had a slightly odd riding position, shoulders slumped and her left arm wrapped around the front of her Dririder jacket.
Her helmet was tipped forward as well. Low blood pressure I thought, or perhaps a stroke, heaven forbid!
I put on my hazard lights as the Suzuki slowed further and she pulled off the side of the motorway into a little layby a sneaky cop sometimes uses to set up a radar trap.
My KTM is a throaty beast and I didn’t want to surprise her as I pulled alongside to see if I could render assistance or call an ambulance, so I cut the motor and coasted in beside her with my hazards on as she came to a stop beside the Armco barrier. The slump now quite pronounced as she cut the engine.
Turns out it wasn’t petrol or electrics that was the root cause. It was an iphone6 Plus.
She was texting with one hand. Texting with one hand on a motorcycle while she was riding. As someone passionate about motorcycle safety and biker rights, it did my head in to see something so dumb. What a mug. I shared these thoughts mixed in with some colourful phraseology.
Despite the good efforts of NZTA and their engaging ‘‘Hello’’ campaign with voice effects by Lionel Ritchie, I think it’s fair to say that the law change that made using a cellphone while driving has not been a total winner in terms of changing behaviour here in Godzone. In fact it’s going backwards.
Recently an industry observer perched outside Wellington central police station and monitored all the passing cars.
He found that in one hour, 30 to 40 people drove by the station while on their phones. A pretty blatant datapoint of noncompliance.
In the United States, the National Safety Council found that cellphone use while driving led to 1.6 million crashes each year – and more than 300,000 injuries result from people texting while driving. Furthermore, they reckon more than one out of every four car accidents in the US results from texting while driving.
Across the ditch, it’s entered the top five causes of Australian road fatalities.
Here in Godzone the road toll was its highest for eight years in 2017, with 380 people dying. While the percentage of these accidents caused by cellphone is unknown, it’s unlikely to be a trivial number.
It’s not just private drivers, it’s the professionals. My purely anecdotal observations is that tradespeople are often offenders, as are courier drivers. This puts the business under commercial pressure to enforce the right business rules. But it also puts them at legal risk under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 if something goes wrong. Something like the worker hurting themselves or others.
So rather than just the driver getting an $80 fine and 20 demerit points, the directors and officers of the business could face fines of up to $600,000 and the business itself a fine of up to $3 million. Plus there is criminal (rather than just civil) liability.
I’m betting dollars to doughnuts that many of these firms aren’t aware of this. And it might be an interesting button to push in the war to deliver safer roads. That, along with the threat to confiscate cellphones. As someone with two teenage daughters, I can tell you nothing scares them more than the prospect of losing their phone.
In the medium-term, technology will provide a solution. Every car will have a wireless docking port (and likely wireless charger) that seamlessly provides users with irresistible functionality to meet their need to communicate while driving, together with safeguards to make texting unfeasible.
But until then, I reckon it’s time to take a harder line and the business button could be the one to push.
Meanwhile, if you’re that GN250 rider, please get your act together.
❚ Mike ‘‘MOD’’ O’donnell is a writer and professional director, and he also chaired the NZ Motorcycle Safety Summit. His Twitter handle is @modsta and he’s got some ability with colourful phraseology.