Carol Owens and Cell Phones

Forget cell phones, ban kids from cars
Posted: Aug. 8, 2003

State Rep. Carol Owens, the Republican from Oshkosh, has proposed a ban on cell phones while driving.

Drivers are unusually dangerous, I guess the argument goes, when they are gabbing about things like that darned state trooper pulling out from behind the bushes they just flew by.

Or how they can't, for the life of them, remember which road they took home from the tavern last night.

People yakety-yak-yak on cell phones all the time, and once in a while someone yaks right through a stop sign or a red light. Surely, a cell phone ban will be worth it if we can save just one life.

But why stop at one?

Thirty percent of drivers in one recent study talked on cell phones. But 71% ate, drank or spilled food and beverages. A full 86% experienced some sort of "external distraction."

I hereby propose a ban on tube tops.

And one other thing. The new study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and the University of North Carolina proves that the distraction of talking on a cell phone is nothing compared to the distraction of kids.

Kids - let's face it - are frighteningly dangerous.

Babies alone distract your average parent-cum-driver 8.4 times per hour, according to the new study.

Which, looking on the bright side, is still only half the number of times most babies wake up their parents in the middle of the night.

It is true that the length of your average cell phone conversation is much longer than the average length of time it takes to threaten your child with stopping the car and letting him walk home.

But - dialing aside - over 98% of the time a person is talking on a cell phone they are able to keep their eyes on the road, according to the study. About 22% of the time people are distracted by babies, on the other hand, they are looking either at the child itself or for something else inside the car.

Based solely on the last long-distance car trip I took with my three small children, I suspect that something else might be the gun I kept wishing I had to shoot myself.

Distractions are defined in the study as "screaming or other loud noises, sudden movements, crying, whining or complaining, kicking the seat, grabbing onto the driver, emotional conversations or outbursts, asking the driver to 'look' at something, etc."

That "etc," I'm presuming, includes Kid Number Two telling Kid Number Three that he is too dumb to play "I Spy" and Kid Number Three going into a crying jag that, ironically, abates only when Dad - beyond distraction and well into apoplexy - drives the mini-van into a tree.

So, Rep. Owens, do you think it would be OK if I used my cell phone then?

I didn't really ask her that, of course.

What I really asked her, in so many words, was whether in order to do this safety thing right she thinks we ought to ban children as well.

She laughed, it seemed to me, a little bit nervously.

It's not like kids wouldn't be allowed near cars at all. If you really needed to get your kid to school, for instance, or the hospital, Owens' law could maybe allow you to strap them to the roof, or maybe put them in the trunk along with the cell phone. That way, if they needed you, they'd have a way to call for help.

Or, in a bizarre world where cell phones would be the scapegoat rather than speeding or inattentiveness or plain old mistakes, at least leave a message for you at home.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=160726