Dangers of Distracted and Negligent Driving

But my all time favorite example of goofy negligent driving is:

I'm not talking about the common practice of holding a lapdog while motoring. Some people actually have the dog doing the steering. Dogs love this and can actually be observed smiling and basking in the attention they receive.

Hey, who says dogs can't drive?

There was a guy in Austin a few years back who trained his three dogs to ride on his motorcycle. One small and two medium canines rode, without helmets, by standing steadily on the bike's tank and seat. The little one had his front paws on the handlebars.

It seems "distracted" may not be strong enough language to cover this negligent driving list, which has a few items deleted to pass family filters.

The point here is that everyone is involved in some form of driving while distracted. Some do it less, some do it more. Some do it well, many do it negligently.

Dream Weaver

31% of survey respondents said they are distracted by daydreams while driving. Hey, everybody daydreams while driving, some just don't have good dream recollection.

Driving responsibly is mentally taxing. Professionals are taught to check mirrors every 5 seconds, even when nothing is back there. This is impossible to continue for protracted periods. There is a natural tendency for an idle mind to become a playground and reduce its workload.

While riding west across New Mexico on my motorcycle in the summer of 2007, I was minding my own business, doing the 75 mph speed limit. I was passed by a SUV pulling a three axle RV trailer. Now, it is not uncommon for these trailers to have a flat tire without the driver noticing. His bare wheel cut two white grooves in the asphalt as the last fragments of the blown tire flew off.

As the badly listing trailer moved back into the lane ahead of me, a big piece of the tire's steel belt skeleton flew straight at me. Here was my chance to practice my high speed swerve maneuver.

That did it.

I rolled on a little throttle and leaned left. In seconds I was alongside the tow vehicle.

The driver sat transfixed, staring straight ahead, doing a steady 90 mph. He was unable to notice the bright red bike and black leather clad figure wildly gesturing beside him.

They used to call this "highway hypnosis."

I knew it was dangerous, but I couldn't resist sliding right over to where I could have knocked on his window if my right hand wasn't holding the throttle.

He finally saw me, face to helmeted face, and freaked out.

I did my best imitation of a motorcycle cop, my gauntleted finger pointing authoritatively to the break down lane, and broke away like a fighter jet.

Motorcycle touring is so cool.

"There Ought'a be a Law"

With so many distractions contributing to so many wrecks, it's no surprise that various groups are calling for regulation.

The Center for Auto Safety has petitioned the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to outlaw the highest profile dangerous distraction, cell phoning while driving. Ralph Nader's auto consumer group wants to ban hands-free as well as hand-held phones.

Studies have shown that hands-free technology doesn't resolve the mentally-distracted nature of phoning while driving.

The consumer group also wants to outlaw GM OnStar and Lexus TeleAid satellite communication services. Even those using Onstar to summon emergency medical aid would be required to stop before the service would connect.

Some towns in trucker-hated Ohio have passed park-to-talk ordinances. No surprise that "the (insert expletive here) Buckeye State" is trigger happy.

Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Washington, DC have already passed legislation criminalizing hand-held cell phone use while driving. Every time a car full of kids crashes, new proposed solutions to the distracted driver scenario come out of the woodwork.

In Great Britain, anti-phone laws, widely ignored by the motoring public, grow ever stricter, with prison time mandated for those involved in accidents while preoccupied by phoning.

The alcoholic beverage industry absolutely loves having the spotlight shifted away from them.

Hmmm, who could be funding this cell-phones-as-dangerous-as-drunk-driving campaign?

Car 54 Where Are You?

Promoters say these laws will save lives. There is no evidence to support their position. All such studies presume widespread compliance. With 70 million cell phones already on the road these regulations will create a nightmare for law enforcement.

In the field, they are unenforceable. Once the transition to hands-free is made, officers will not be able to see who is distracted by the cell phone.

But after a crash, they provide a new angle for prosecutors and personal injury plaintiff's counsel.

Oh boy, lawyers in love.

Police are tracing phone records of drivers involved in crashes to see if the line was active at the time. But where car-fulls of teens are involved, this is not proof the driver was guilty of DWT.

The irony is that police cruisers are among the most gadget laden, distracting, dangerous cars on the road. Seeing cops on the phone while working is getting pretty common.

It is very difficult to clock oncoming traffic from a moving police car.

Once I was northbound in, yep, wall-to-wall-cops Ohio. I was eating a can of green beans with my cruise control set on 47 mph to be safer (from the danger of a citation). An oncoming state trooper transposed the digits on his radar readout and panicked. He mistakenly believed he had nabbed a trucker doing "74" in a 55 zone. That mistake almost cost him his life.

The young officer looked down for the switch to turn on his blue lights, and plowed his car into the muddy median. He crossed the interstate sideways and spun out, right in front of me and my load of northbound Mexican-assembled auto parts.

I had already begun moving to my right and missed him by a good three feet, grinning and shrugging my shoulders as I rolled by the stalled squad car, which now faced the wrong way, square in the middle of the interstate.

Perhaps the most serious motorist distraction is rubbernecking at accidents. The more emergency vehicles, turned over trucks, and bodies in the street, the greater the likelyhood of a wreck going the other way. This is even a problem for truckers, who are trained to ignore wrecks, and have already seen thousands. But when the wreck involves trucks, driver curiosity often overcomes training.

Yes, distracted driving is an epidemic, along with the aggressive driving/road rage epidemic.

Drunken driving continues, though rates have declined. Texas DPS officers privately have told me that they rely heavily on truckers to report sightings of drunks. We can see the bottle, but cops must stop the vehicle. With so many weaving and erratic distracted drivers, selecting one who might be drunk is near impossible.

Training is the Answer

Yes, the quality of driving in America sucks from every angle: drunken, aggressive, and distracted driving is rampant.

But the answer is stricter driver training and licensing, not criminal sanctions. So many are operating vehicles without even basic skills and common sense.

Here are a couple quotes from public servants who know their jobs;

"The first step toward reducing the number of
distracted drivers on Illinois roads each year
is to increase public awareness about the
importance of giving your full attention to
the road."

Jesse White, Illinois Secretary of State

“I urge legislators not to interpret these results as a need for new legislative initiatives. It is simply not good public policy to pass laws addressing every type of driver behavior.”

Lt. Col. Jim Champagne, Chairman, Governors Highway Safety Association.

"Education is the key to helping the public recognize and manage distractions while driving,"

Mark Edwards, Ph.D., AAA Traffic Safety.

The best approach is social conditioning through media/video campaigns depicting distracted or negligent driving as slovenly, unattractive, and very uncool. This worked with cigarette smoking, allowing smokers to eventually be segregated and ostracized.

Regulatory responses to a problem like this often focus on a high profile political football like phones without consideration of the big picture.

The Center for Auto Safety contends that in field un-enforceability means Federal action is needed to restrict car makers from installing any electronic distractions in new cars.

There is no way to stuff the genie of portable electronic communications back in the bottle. I recently saw ads for an ipod-like portable music player integrated into a pair of sunglasses. Stealth cell phones can't be far behind.

After-market enterprises will step up and offer stealth versions of any device banned from cars.

It has been decades since several states banned radar detectors. Federal regs prohibit them in commercial trucks. Yet there are millions of detectors on the roads, and more jammers for sale every day. Made-in-China has lowered the price and multiplied the number of small electronics firms by a large factor.

Studies show that the device rarely produces the distraction, inattentive motoring is a form of behavior. Many drivers routinely use electronic tools with no discernible loss of focus on the dangers of traveling.

Most professional truckers, overworked to the point of exhaustion, are required to multi-task just to survive. One big distraction for lonely truckers is members of the opposite sex.

Yes, women in cars or along the roadway are the most serious trucker distraction.

Any female who responds to driver attention will light up the CB radio for miles. Many "commercials" earn a good living, and avoid police attention, by working the road.

I ran nearly a million miles without an accident, but some of my close calls involved diverting my attention to women for too long. I am married and had no use for the rolling pay-per-view program, but after a few weeks alone in that cab, even girls on billboards seemed distractingly realistic.

Seven little girls sittin' in the back seat
Huggin and a'kissin with Fred
I said, why don't one of you come up and sit beside me
And this is what the seven girls said

All together now, one, two, three
Keep you mind on your drivin'
Keep you hands on the wheel
And keep your snoopy eyes on the road up ahead.

Paul Evans, Seven Little Girls, 1959 pop hit

There is a recent news story about a SUV single vehicle rollover which occurred because the driver was severely distracted by an amorous couple in the back seat.

Will the regulators also outlaw everything on the long list of distracted driving behaviors above?

Do billboards along the highway, gradually becoming electronic, and designed by professionals to attract and hold attention, pose a danger to the easily distractible?

With highway rest areas fast disappearing and places to safely pull over few, how will electronics which require the car to stop be used? Already some navigation systems have this only-when-stopped feature. Will voice activated and speech recognition controls, now appearing in luxury cars, be illegal?

Will dogs caught driving illegally, under the threat of incarceration, be forced to get their drivers license?