The NH legislature, and Rep Richard Drisko, will be revisiting their efforts to write a new distracted driving law with features that prohibit driving with a pet on your lap, would require headlight use when its raining, and bans texting or cell phone use while driving.  On its face some of this this sounds sensible.  I happen to think headlight use is important when it’s raining, or at dawn and dusk, but I’m not sure I’d legislate it.  And these more reasonable assertions appear to me to be just fluff to finally get a cell phone ban on the books. 

Cell phones and particularly texting can be very distracting, distraction is the number one cause of crashes, and sometimes these collisions kill people other than those exhibiting the bad behavior, so the theory goes, we need a law to protect the innocent–let’s ban cell phone use in moving vehicles. (Hands free is not part of the restriction.)

But if you look at some of the numbers, the root cause of the problem doesn’t appear to be cell phones at all. 

An NHTSA study states that while cell phone use increases the odds of a crash by a factor of three, it is no more distracting to drivers than having a conversation with someone who is in the vehicle.   In fact it is less distracting than looking at objects outside the car, reaching for something in the car, reading something, or applying make up, none of which are on the docket for banning in the immediate future, nor should they be. 

National annual crash and fatality statistics over the past 10 years are stuck around 6.3 million and 42,000 respectively.  Despite a massive increase in cell phone use,  and increases in the opportunity for collisions—more cars on the road with more drivers, driving more miles –its clearly conversation that has been distracting us, and not just cell phones themselves.

Since we can’t ban conversation, and we are not about to ban looking, reaching, listening, or a host of other equally or more dangerous activities, should we waste the time and expense on enacting and enforcing a cell phone ban?  And can we even justify the object of additional legislation, removing peace officers from other tasks, and adding case loads to courthouses, simply because cell phones allow us to see conversation happening?   Is this going to require towns to add cops, judges and clerks, and the increased budgets they require for something that may not even solve the problem?

According to the FCC, Cell phone subscriptions in New Hampshire have risen from 309,000 in 2000, to over 1 million in 2006.  Two years later it is safe to say we have more cell phones in use than registered drivers, so I think we have hit total saturation for the opportunity to use a phone in a motor vehicle. 

But the number of fatalities in NH from 2003-2007 (the only years for which I could immediately get accurate information) show the total number of deaths at 127 and 129 respectively.  That’s not a significant indicator for association given a more than 300% increase is cell-phone users.  Deaths were higher in 2004 and 2005, but have dropped in succeeding years.  The data favors motorcycle deaths to account for these changes.  Motorcycle deaths rose from 9 in 2003 to 25 in 2007, peaking at 44 in 2005.   So it is difficult to link increased cell-phone use as a significant factor in NH highway deaths given these figures, and in fact (unless the cycle-deaths are related to phone use) we have seen a decrease in fatalities absent the motorcycle statistics.

Non-fatal collisions are another matter, but reliable data for NH was hard to find for this post, and it’s too significant to simply ignore.  While I am comfortable with the idea that conversation is the cause and not specifically cell phone conversation, more information would be helpful.   The only figures I could find showed a slight reduction in the total number of collision from 2004 to 2005, years when fatalities were rising, which supports my premise on its surface, but not in a meaningful enough way to close the deal.  Crashes can increase operating costs to the state and the taxpayer, but so does enforcing unenforceable laws that fail to address the root of the problem, so this part of my research remains inconclusive.

If anyone can provide reliable non-fatal crash statistics from 2000-2008 please post them as a comment or email it to me directly.  I’ll incorporate them into an update.

In general, Alcohol and speed continue to dominate the picture in NH, with a significant number of annual deaths resulting from road departures—most likely ending at trees.  Nobody is, I assume, about to ban trees.  Eighty-five of the 127 deaths in 2007 were road departures.  (It was 84 in 2003).

Years of casual research have lead me to the conclusion that the things we put in our cars are not nearly as big a problem as where our heads are at when we are using them, and the larger problem of a cultural perception that driving is a right instead of a privilege.  Banning cell phones wont change that.

So I am consistently against these kinds of trendy ‘regulations’ because there is no evidence that banning or limiting cell phones will have any affect other than to force peace officers away from more pressing business, and to annoy motorists, and clog courtrooms with cases that while superficially relevant to a deeper problem, will never make the kind of impact (no pun intended) supporters would have us believe.

In closing, many proponents point to the abundance of similar regulations in other states as a reason to jump on the band wagon, but why simply embrace an idea that despite its popularity, shows no obvious short or long term benefits in a state that cannot connect them to an actual problem that needs fixing?  We are clearly using cell phones to distract ourselves from the deeper problem.  People will consistently find ways to distract themselves in their cars and trucks, with or without cell phones.  The numbers prove that.  Given the details presented here—barring any new evidence on non-fatal crashes—more restrictive legislation is a waste of time.  As to lap dogs, and headlights, maybe we should just stick to the New Hampshire way, where we all remind people about the risks of certain types of individual behavior, instead of trying to limit everyone elses behavior with unnecessary legislation?