NTSB compares phone use to driving drunk
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Federal board suggests a ban on phones while driving, but many balk at the idea
- Many support banning texting while driving, but say hands-free, GPS should remain legal
- Auto industry columnist says law would be "most ignored since Prohibition"
(CNN) -- A federal agency in charge of safety on the roads wants an outright ban on using mobile phones while driving. But what if we're just too hooked on our smartphones and other digital gadgets to care?
For many drivers in 2011, a phone is as vital an in-car accessory as a radio, a map or a cup holder. Spend a few minutes watching motorists backed up at a traffic light and you'll see a large chunk of them on their smartphones: talking, texting, peering at a digital map or playing "Angry Birds."
Enough, says the National Transportation Safety Board, which on Tuesday issued its most sweeping recommendation on mobile-phone use yet -- that all nonemergency talking, texting or other use by drivers be made illegal. That would include hands-free devices as well as handheld ones.
Reaction has been heated. There seems to be across-the-board agreement, even on the part of some self-admitted offenders, that a ban on drivers using their hands to text and talk makes sense.
But after that, things get more complicated. And some critics are saying that any law targeting phone use in cars is already too late.
"Mobile phones are omnipresent. Virtually every adult and many kids have one," Detroit Free Press auto columnist Mark Phelan wrote Wednesday. "No law will change the fact that people expect to remain in touch while they're behind the wheel."
The NTSB's proposed ban, he said, would be "the most pointless and universally ignored law since Prohibition."
"Imagine the old 55-mph speed limit, only without radar detectors," he wrote.
In the United States, more than 35% of adults own a Web-enabled smartphone and more than 83% own a mobile phone of some kind, according to a recent Pew study.
At any given daylight moment, some 13.5 million U.S. drivers are on handheld phones, according to a study released last week by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Some 3,092 roadway fatalities last year involved distracted drivers, although the actual number may be far higher, the NHTSA said. Federal officials have taken to calling phone use behind the wheel "the new DUI."
Alex Hughes of Austin, Texas, says he doesn't use his phone while actively driving. But at stoplights, he admitted, he'll do everything from texting and checking e-mail to reading news stories, checking Facebook and posting to Twitter.
