WE’VE DONE QUITE a bit in South Carolina in recent years to make
the transition from child to young driver a safer one: We’ve made
kids wait much longer to get behind the wheel; we’ve increased the
amount of training they must receive; we’ve prohibited them from
driving at night without a parent; we’ve even limited the number of
friends they can have in the car with them.
The Legislature took these steps at the urging of highway safety
advocates, who had identified them as successful strategies for
reducing crashes, which are the leading cause of deaths among 15- to
20-year-olds. And there’s reason to believe that the changes are
starting to pay off, albeit slowly: The number of fatal accidents in
our state involving teens dropped from 148 in 2002 to 145 in 2003, a
year after the new restrictions were passed; and preliminary figures
show the number down to 139 in 2004.
Now, the National Transportation Safety Board has added this
recommendation: Ban cell phone use among young, inexperienced
drivers.
The board had already come out for a ban a couple of years ago,
prompting 11 states to act. But last month’s vote added the ban to
the safety board’s “Most Wanted List” of most urgent strategies for
saving lives on the highways. As the board’s acting chairman, Mark
Rosenker, told The Associated Press: “Learning how to drive while
distracted is definitely a recipe for disaster.”
“Learning how to drive” is the key to understanding why the
recommendation makes so much sense — and why, at least for now, it
applies only to teens.
Like the other restrictions we have already put in place, the
idea of restricting cell phone use among teens is built around the
fact that learning to drive and get comfortable with traffic takes
time, and concentration. It also acknowledges that teens lack mature
judgment — in this case, the judgment to understand the risk of
accidents and take proper precautions, such as slowing down when
they’re on the phone or hanging up or pulling over when conditions
warrant.
Cell phone use is far from the only distraction teens, and
adults, face behind the wheel; distracted driving is, after all, a
leading cause of wrecks. But safety officials believe this is one
that they can more easily regulate than others; they have concluded
that the problem is bad enough that it’s better to do what they can
than to do nothing to combat distractions.
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration says
that research on the danger of cell phone use among adults is murky:
Talking on a cell phone is clearly more distracting than not talking
on a cell phone, but it appears to be less distracting than
operating a CD player or reading — and no more distracting than
eating, grooming or talking to a passenger.
The safety board has sought better research to pin down just how
dangerous cell phone use is to the general population, and it has
made clear that such research might lead to a call to ban cell phone
use among adult drivers as well. But for now, it’s concentrating on
the risk that seems clear and the solution that seems achievable. We
believe that’s a wise course of action — and one our General
Assembly should
adopt.
