Canada’s missing the message about a deadly problem

Lack of good national or provincial statistics is a ‘disgrace’

Most Canadians think of it like sneaking a cigarette.

They know they shouldn’t have their phone in their hand when they’re behind the wheel. But they haven’t yet arrived at a place where the guilt over the action overpowers the compulsion.

Ian Jack, the Canadian Automobile Association’s managing director of communications and government relations, likens it to the appeal of that solitary cigarette for someone trying to kick the habit.

“If people are at a point where they’re sneaking their texts in their vehicles, it’s still not acceptable,” he said. “We still need to do better, but we’re starting to move in the right direction.”

MADD Canada’s chief executive, Andy Murie, says we could simply choose to disable phones when a car is moving.

“That technology exists now to prevent someone with a cellphone from getting into a car ... and any kind of call or text from coming through. It basically puts the phone out of commission.

“There is an immediate solution that’s technological that could be done. Nobody wants to go there,” he said.

Meanwhile, the extra attention police are having to pay to distracted driving is shifting their focus from impaired driving, he said.

Many road safety advocates argue that what is needed are comprehensive national statistics to convince drivers of the growing severity of the problem and the need to put down their phones.

In Canada, those statistics are difficult to come by.

“If you try to get national, or even provincial statistics on texting while driving, you’ll find that’s well nigh impossible,” Jack said. “They have a catch-all category called distracted driving. It applies to an awful lot of things including applying makeup or trimming your nose hairs as you’re driving, as well as texting.”

The CAA has been lobbying for years to get the federal and provincial governments to take data collection more seriously. He points to the most recent federal data on road deaths — it’s two years old.

“It’s an international disgrace,” he said. “You can go on a U.S. government website today and look up collision and fatality stats through the end of June 2016. There are very few developed countries in which the latest stats you can find are from two years ago. We don’t find this acceptable.”

Robyn Robertson, president of the non-profit Traffic Injury Research Foundation, said having solid data on distracted driving is vital. Without it, there’s no way to understand the true scope of the problem, she said.