Texting can kill

Here’s a question: can it only get worse? Not long ago, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary announced a crackdown on distracted drivers and launched a blitz to ticket people using cellphones while driving. They caught many: Operation Ringtone has seen more than 600 tickets issued, including tickets issued to people using cellphones in school zones. Lawbreakers aren’t hard to find.

As a Telegram article pointed out not too many months ago, putting a news photographer at an intersection will bring you as many photographs of cellphone-using and texting drivers as you might ever want.

Heck, it could be a whole new revenue-generation source for our cash-strapped provincial government: don’t raise taxes to bring down the deficit, just ticket everyone who is on their phone while driving.

Then, this week, the RCMP did much the same thing, going on the hunt for distracted drivers.

But look around when you’re driving, and ask yourself if the increased police attention means you’re seeing fewer chatty drivers — chances are, you’re not.

Then, there’s this case from Peterborough, England, where a Jaguar being driven at close to 110 km/h piled into the back of a slower-moving Peugeot, pushing the Peugeot — driven by Sukhdeep Johal — into the path of a transport truck.

The judges in an appeal of the case were blunt: “Sukhdeep Johal was killed. He and the lorry driver were blameless.”

So what caused the crash? You’ve probably already guessed — but not completely.

“Something must have caused the appellant to be inattentive of the road ahead. She had two mobile telephones in her car, both of which she had used without stopping to do so in the minutes before the collision. She had used a Samsung handset to send a text message at 4:12 p.m., to make a two-second outgoing call at 4:16 and to receive an incoming call immediately afterwards of one minute, 33 seconds. At 4:19 an incoming call was diverted to voicemail and at 4:24 she took an incoming call for 28 seconds. On a Sony mobile telephone she sent an outgoing text message at 4:15 and received an incoming text message at 4:17.”

Using two phones — while driving — at high speeds.

“She denied using a mobile telephone during the journey when interviewed by the police and initially said that she had never used a mobile telephone when driving. In fact she had done this and had received two fixed penalties for doing so in 2009 and 2012. She did not reveal the existence of the Sony mobile telephone to the police until records of its usage established that it had been in the Jaguar before the collision.”

The judge in the original case, noting both that the 31-year-old driver was a single mother and that she had remarkably little remorse for her actions, sentenced her to six years in prison. The Appeals Court agreed.

What part of the distracted driving message isn’t getting through? Canadian police forces have been pointing out that distracted drivers — particularly those using cellular devices — are now causing more accidents than drunk drivers. Clearly, distracted driving kills. How serious do the penalties have to be before the general population takes the risks seriously?