Texting while driving is fatal. It's worse than stupid; it's a hazard both to yourself and to everyone around you. Forget tickets; anyone caught doing this epically dangerous activity should have their licenses suspended.
I can understand why, in the wake of an awful texting-while-driving crash, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) felt the need to weigh in. But the agency's proposed ban on all cell phone use while driving is impractical, it's overkill, and it doesn't make sense.
The best way to drive is looking at the road, with both hands on the wheel. To do anything else endangers yourself, your passengers, and the other people on the road.
So it makes sense to ban activities that take your hands off the wheel or your eyes off the road. Texting, the worst of all, makes you a non-driver for several seconds at a time. It's as bad as falling asleep. In a much-cited Virginia Tech study, texting was shown to increase the chances of "a crash or near-crash" by 23 times.
Handheld cell phone conversations are also a problem, especially when you're looking at your phone to dial or answer it—once again, you're taking your eyes off the road.
The science—and NTSB's recommendations—get much muddier, though, when we're talking about absolutely hands-free conversations. Notice that the stats the NTSB pulls out in its press release (rather than the shocking anecdotes) are about texting, emailing, and accessing the Internet.
CNN reports that "devices installed in the vehicle by the manufacturer" would be allowed, though I don't see that in the NTSB's recommendations. If CNN is right, why is talking on an OnStar or Ford Sync system less distracting than using a headset?
The Virginia Tech distracted-driving study showed talking on a phone to slightly increase chances of a crash, but didn't make any distinction between Bluetooth headsets and in-car kits, and saved the really scary stats for dialing a phone, texting, and emailing.
Furthermore, the NTSB permits "devices designed to support the driving task," which presumably means GPS devices. Staring and poking at a GPS unit or app is just as bad as texting.
To enforce the new ban, the NTSB asks for some rather insane things from the cell phone industry. There are already apps out there that can restrict texting and other features if a car is in motion—those are a really good idea. But the NTSB wants those apps to determine a phone's position within the car so they can be used by passengers and not drivers. Really? What if it's on the center console, between the driver and the front seat passenger?
Maybe The Problem Is Driving
Cars are full of distractions: the radio, your kids, a drink, other passengers. Texting is a unique one, because it renders you a total non-driver. Understood. But saying we'll ban Bluetooth headsets but not OnStar and Ford Sync seems like a tacit acknowledgement that having conversations isn't the core problem here.
There's a larger issue at hand, too: we don't take driving seriously. I remember when I took my driving exam, in Virginia. You basically had to be a warm body to pass that test. We don't re-test drivers, either, and we don't offer sufficient public transportation to keep incompetent, tired, sick, or drunk drivers off the roads. Stricter, repeated driving exams might get people to take the road more seriously, but then we still have the question of how those people without licenses will get around.
In the absence of major societal changes, strictly enforced rules against the most dangerous or most obvious hazards—including running traps for people holding phones or texting—could help change Americans' habits. Mandating safe-driving apps on phones, such as those which block texts at speed, might be another smart idea.
But slapping down a ban on all conversations just goes too far. It's unenforceable, impractical, and even seems to contradict itself. Rather than stamping out all phone use, the NTSB and the industry should work to make texting and e-mailing on the road impossible.