Put down the phone
Driving while ‘intexticated’ is too dangerous and has been against the law since 2017.
If you were reading this as a text on your phone while driving down the highway, it would take about five seconds to get to this point.
Traveling at a speed of 55 mph (yeah, right) you also would have covered the length of a football field with your eyes off the road and at least one hand off the wheel. A slower car, a stalled vehicle or a pedestrian in your path could be paying a high price for your reading habits.
It’s called “distracted driving.” Texting, of course, is just one form of distraction behind the wheel — others include eating, talking and changing the radio — but safety analysts say it is among the worst.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention categorized three main types of driver distraction:
Visual: taking your eyes off the road.
Manual: taking your hands off the wheel.
Cognitive: taking your mind off of driving.
“Texting while driving is especially dangerous,” the CDC says, “because it combines all three types.”
Whatever the type, the results can be deadly.
Hank Sibley, acting chief of the Texas Highway Patrol, told the Chronicle last month that at least 10 percent of fatal crashes that highway patrolmen respond to involve distracted driving. Sibley has since been named director of the agency’s North Texas division.
Federal statistics suggest that it could be even worse. According to information from the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University, distracted driving contributes to as much as 20 percent of all fatal crashes and that cell phone use was the primary source of driver distraction.
Researchers, according to the institute, “point to two numbers to illustrate the magnitude of the texting-while-driving problem: an estimated 5 billion text messages are sent each day in the United States, and at least 20 percent of all drivers have admitted to texting while driving.”
Texas banned texting while driving in 2017, but the law allows drivers to use their cell phones to type directions into navigation apps or to select and control music. That, Sibley said, makes it hard for an officer to determine whether a driver was actually texting.
In a meeting in February, Texas lawmakers agreed that distracted driving remains a problem but said it is unlikely the Legislature will try to toughen the ban.
The big issue remains the difficulty in enforcement. Although there is talk of producing a roadside Textalyzer to confirm that a phone was being used to send or read texts before the driver was pulled over, the process is raising questions about privacy and how and when it would be administered.
The most effective response may be to change the culture. Many people tend to think of texting as a momentary distraction that they can handle in the same way they change a radio station or reach over for a cup of coffee.
The truth is that all of these behaviors are distractions that carry risks. The difference, again, is that texting diverts eyes, hands and mind away from driving and for a length of time that can prove lethal.
No one expects drivers to behave the way they did when the driving license examiner was riding shotgun — shoulders back, hands at 10 and 2, eyes darting expertly from the road to side and rearview mirrors — but we shouldn’t be engaging in written correspondence either.
A study released in August by the Texas Transportation Institute found that a lot of people weren’t even aware of the texting ban. In Houston, which was worst among metro areas in compliance, four of 10 drivers were not aware that driving while texting was against the law.
Awareness seems like a great place to start. Plenty of national organizations, such as AAA, provide information, statistics and tips on eliminating distractions for drivers.
Many smartphones have apps that block notices while the car is in motion. Most newer vehicles allow for hands-free calls. And everyone has the option of simply putting the phone down and focusing on the road.
It can be done. For the sake of all our lives, it must be done.