As cell phones have become more popular and their use has increased, so too have cell phone-related accidents. These accidents range from minor to catastrophic and have led to laws that limit or prohibit the use of cell phones on the road.
Cell phones draw a driver's attention away from traffic, road conditions and vehicle operation. Some studies have shown the increased likelihood of an accident to be four times the normal rate when a driver is using a cell phone. A large part of this dangerous distraction involves the need to physically handle the phone. Activities such as reading the display screen, pressing buttons and holding the phone to the ear all require the driver to take his hands off the steering wheel or his eyes off the road. Cell phones require a driver to listen to the person speaking through the phone, leaving the driver less likely to hear another driver's horn or an emergency siren. When thoughts are focused on the subject of the conversation, they are also less focused on driving.
As early as the mid-1990s, cell phone manufacturers began offering hands-free kits for most of their phones. These often consist of a mount for the phone itself and may include an earphone and/or clip-on microphone. For phones with a speakerphone option, the mount may be all that is necessary for hands-free phone use. Newer cell phones featuring Bluetooth earpieces with integrated microphones take the simplification of phone use a step further, requiring only that the phone be close enough for the user to carry on a conversation and control many of the phone's features wirelessly through the earpiece. In some studies, the use of hands-free cell phones has shown to do little to improve driver safety. This is because, although it removes the physical distraction of handling a phone, the driver must still divide his attention between her conversation and her driving.
In 2001, New York became the first state to ban the use of cell phones while driving, unless a hands-free device is used. This opened the field to other states, which borrowed the accident data cited by New York and enacted their own cell phone bans. Hundreds of bills have been introduced into state legislatures, and today most states regulate the use of cell phones for some drivers. In some states, including California, Virginia and Indiana, drivers under the age of 18 are not permitted to use a cell phone while driving, even if a hands-free system is available. These "All Cell Phone Bans" usually require the use of a hands-free device for adult drivers. In many states, some drivers, such as school bus drivers, are subject to especially stringent regulations that may disallow any cell phone use while driving. While little data exist to suggest the effectiveness of these laws, they are difficult to enforce and many drivers continue to use cell phones illegally.
A more recent concern in driver safety involving cell phones involves text messages and other phone features that do not require talking into the phone. Texting while driving has been cited as the cause of numerous accidents. It has become more worrisome, as text-messaging capabilities are built into more phones, and more users purchase text-messaging plans or use the built-in Internet features on their phones. Texting-while-driving bans began to appear in 2009 and are now a reality in several states. Tthese bans are even more difficult to enforce than cell phone use bans, however, because texting can be done discreetly and without exposing the phone to someone outside the car. Citations for texting while driving are often issued when drivers are stopped for some other offense (such as speeding) or after an accident has occurred and texting is found to be a factor.
The statistical data surrounding accidents involving driver cell phone use point to the danger. A study by the University of Utah found that the impairment a driver experiences using a cell phone equals that of a person driving with a blood-alcohol content of .08 percent (above the legal limit in some states). Driving while distracted (known as DWD) is responsible for 25 percent of all car accidents, with many of those coming from the distractions of using a cell phone or other mobile device. In the area of mental distraction, a study by Carnegie Mellon University found that the amount of brain activity devoted to driving may decrease by as much as 37 percent when using a cell phone.
