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Regular readers will know that I have been advocating for stricter laws that would prohibit individuals from using mobile communications devices while they are operating a motor vehicle. Researchers at Harvard have estimated that, even seven years ago, drivers using cellphones were causing 2,600 fatal crashes a year in the United States and 570,000 accidents that resulted in a range of injuries, from minor to serious. Others studies show that a driver talking on a cellphone is four times likelier to crash and that using a hands-free device does not eliminate the risk.
Whos’ to blame for this carnage? The answer is simple. The mobile communications manufacturers of today are the equivalent of yesterday’s cigarette manufacturers. They keep designing, manufacturing and marketing even more complex devices to help accelerate the maiming/killing process. If, seven years ago, there were 2,600 fatal crashes involving persons just talking on their mobile device, imagine what the count is now with those trying to negotiate something like the iPhone while driving.
I equate these mobile communications manufacturers with cigarette manufacturers for one simple reason. Both knew years in advance of people like me talking about how their products were dangerous to the health and well-being of their respective customers, but did absolutely nothing to warn their consumers of those dangers. The fact that cigarette manufacturers knew of the dangers of smoking but remained silent has been well documented by now. But look at these words spoken by Motorola engineer Martin Cooper before a Michigan state commission when he was asked what could be done about the risks posed by mobile phones: "There should be a lock on the dial so that you couldn’t dial while driving," he testified. He spoke those words in the early 1960s. That means these manufacturers knew full well the dangers posed by their products 20 years before the introduction of the original cell phones.
I speculated earlier about how many people may die trying to use their iPhones while operating a motor vehicle. Apple, the Liggett & Myers of phone manufacturers, is openly trying to promote this activity. A description of one new application for the iPhone reads, "Maps on iPhone shows you live traffic information, indicating traffic speed along your route in easy-to-read green, red and yellow highlights."
But this is not new. An advertisement for a mobile service provider that appeared in the New York Times in August of 1987 depicted a man talking on a cellphone while driving a sports car with a surfboard in the back. The ad read: "You can reach all those important clients and still beat the traffic." Kevin Roe, a telecommunications industry analyst since 1993, said well into the 1990s, wireless companies focused on three questions: "Can we cover the highways, do we have enough capacity to handle all the people on the highways, and is the signal strong enough?"
.
Today, almost 50 years after he spoke to the Michigan Commission, Cooper recalls: "I’d pass by the exit I was supposed to take because I was talking on the phone." Thinking back, he said he was "absolutely" aware of potential dangers but did not think roads would become filled with distracted drivers.
Bob Lucky, an executive director at Bell Labs from 1982-92, said he knew that drivers talking on cellphones were not focused fully on the road. But he did not think much about it or discuss it and supposed others did not, either, given the industry’s booming fortunes. "If you’re an engineer, you don’t want to outlaw the great technology you’ve been working on," said Mr. Lucky, now 73. "If you’re a marketing person, you don’t want to outlaw the thing you’ve been trying to sell. If you’re a C.E.O., you don’t want to outlaw the thing that’s been making a lot of money."
In 1990, David Strayer, a junior researcher at GTE (now Verizon), noticed more drivers who seemed to be distracted by their phones, and it scared him. He asked a supervisor if the company should research the risks, "Why would we want to know that?" Mr. Strayer recalled being told. He said the message was clear: "Learning about distraction would not be very helpful to the overall business model." Strayer eventually left GTE to study distracted driving. Using a simulator at the University of Utah, he showed that drivers distracted by calls miss otherwise obvious sights along a virtual highway and that they face a four times greater crash risk.
In 1997, the Canadian Ministry of Health and other groups helped finance research to determine whether drivers distracted by cellphones were more likely to crash. They found that drivers using cellphones were four times likelier to get into accidents than drivers who were focused entirely on the road. "This relative risk is similar to the hazard associated with driving with a blood alcohol level at the legal limit," the researchers wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine. They said hands-free devices were no safer than hand-held phones because of the distraction that comes from focusing on a conversation, not the road.
At least the industry is recognizing the dangers of texting while driving. "Texting or mobile device usage in a car is an issue on par with drunk driving itself," said Daryl Evans, a vice president at AT&T, which has begun adding a sticker that reads "don’t text and drive" to the screens of nearly all new phones.
But why is the industry taking this stand on texting but refuses to do anything about other uses of mobile devices while operating a motor vehicle? Even Steve Largent, the president of the industry’s trade association CTIA, says: "There’s probably little difference between making a phone call and texting. If you have to take your eyes off the road, it can’t be a good thing." And James E. Katz, the director for the Center for Mobile Communications Studies at Rutgers University, says: "The landfill-sized accumulation of studies about the dangers of using these devices while driving should have prompted a much more engaged posture on the part of the industry to be leaders to attempt to rein in this behavior,"
.
But the industry continues to say one thing while acting just the opposite. Here are words from Sprint’s materials accompanying one of its PCS phones: "When using your Sprint PCS phone in the car, focus on driving, not talking, and use your hands-free kit. Failure to follow these instructions may lead to serious personal injury and possibly property damage." There it is: In Sprint’s own words, it says to use hands-free devices when driving. Yet, when California Assemblyman Joe Simitian of Palo Alto tried to introduce legislation to codify "the very practices this industry has been promoting for the last several years," it was opposed by AT&T, Cingular and, yes, Sprint, who said their education of drivers was all that was needed. (Verizon, it should be noted, supported Simitian’s proposed legislation, which, because of heavy industry lobbying efforts, never made it out of committee).
Largent now admits opposing Simitian’s bill was a mistake. Yet the industry continues to promote using mobile devices while driving. A recent Sprint television ad shows a driver and four passengers in a car. The ad is for a mobile wireless service that allows people to use the Internet not just on phones but also computers. "Right now, five co-workers are working from the road using a ‘Mi-Fi,’ a mobile hotspot," the voiceover says. One person is checking e-mail, another is streaming music, a third is using Mapquest and two are downloading and revising a presentation, the voice says. And a recent ad in People magazine for the Nuvifone, sold by AT&T, shows a woman explaining how she got directions from her phone. "I just tapped the address and followed spoken, turn-by-turn directions right to the front door," the ad reads.
So the industry continues to promote activities independent research says kills people, including a lot more innocent people than second hand smoke ever killed. Yes, they are today’s equivalent to cigarette manufactuers. There ought to be a law. In fact, there ought to be a lot of them,
Whos’ to blame for this carnage? The answer is simple. The mobile communications manufacturers of today are the equivalent of yesterday’s cigarette manufacturers. They keep designing, manufacturing and marketing even more complex devices to help accelerate the maiming/killing process. If, seven years ago, there were 2,600 fatal crashes involving persons just talking on their mobile device, imagine what the count is now with those trying to negotiate something like the iPhone while driving.
I equate these mobile communications manufacturers with cigarette manufacturers for one simple reason. Both knew years in advance of people like me talking about how their products were dangerous to the health and well-being of their respective customers, but did absolutely nothing to warn their consumers of those dangers. The fact that cigarette manufacturers knew of the dangers of smoking but remained silent has been well documented by now. But look at these words spoken by Motorola engineer Martin Cooper before a Michigan state commission when he was asked what could be done about the risks posed by mobile phones: "There should be a lock on the dial so that you couldn’t dial while driving," he testified. He spoke those words in the early 1960s. That means these manufacturers knew full well the dangers posed by their products 20 years before the introduction of the original cell phones.
I speculated earlier about how many people may die trying to use their iPhones while operating a motor vehicle. Apple, the Liggett & Myers of phone manufacturers, is openly trying to promote this activity. A description of one new application for the iPhone reads, "Maps on iPhone shows you live traffic information, indicating traffic speed along your route in easy-to-read green, red and yellow highlights."
But this is not new. An advertisement for a mobile service provider that appeared in the New York Times in August of 1987 depicted a man talking on a cellphone while driving a sports car with a surfboard in the back. The ad read: "You can reach all those important clients and still beat the traffic." Kevin Roe, a telecommunications industry analyst since 1993, said well into the 1990s, wireless companies focused on three questions: "Can we cover the highways, do we have enough capacity to handle all the people on the highways, and is the signal strong enough?"
.
Today, almost 50 years after he spoke to the Michigan Commission, Cooper recalls: "I’d pass by the exit I was supposed to take because I was talking on the phone." Thinking back, he said he was "absolutely" aware of potential dangers but did not think roads would become filled with distracted drivers.
Bob Lucky, an executive director at Bell Labs from 1982-92, said he knew that drivers talking on cellphones were not focused fully on the road. But he did not think much about it or discuss it and supposed others did not, either, given the industry’s booming fortunes. "If you’re an engineer, you don’t want to outlaw the great technology you’ve been working on," said Mr. Lucky, now 73. "If you’re a marketing person, you don’t want to outlaw the thing you’ve been trying to sell. If you’re a C.E.O., you don’t want to outlaw the thing that’s been making a lot of money."
In 1990, David Strayer, a junior researcher at GTE (now Verizon), noticed more drivers who seemed to be distracted by their phones, and it scared him. He asked a supervisor if the company should research the risks, "Why would we want to know that?" Mr. Strayer recalled being told. He said the message was clear: "Learning about distraction would not be very helpful to the overall business model." Strayer eventually left GTE to study distracted driving. Using a simulator at the University of Utah, he showed that drivers distracted by calls miss otherwise obvious sights along a virtual highway and that they face a four times greater crash risk.
In 1997, the Canadian Ministry of Health and other groups helped finance research to determine whether drivers distracted by cellphones were more likely to crash. They found that drivers using cellphones were four times likelier to get into accidents than drivers who were focused entirely on the road. "This relative risk is similar to the hazard associated with driving with a blood alcohol level at the legal limit," the researchers wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine. They said hands-free devices were no safer than hand-held phones because of the distraction that comes from focusing on a conversation, not the road.
At least the industry is recognizing the dangers of texting while driving. "Texting or mobile device usage in a car is an issue on par with drunk driving itself," said Daryl Evans, a vice president at AT&T, which has begun adding a sticker that reads "don’t text and drive" to the screens of nearly all new phones.
But why is the industry taking this stand on texting but refuses to do anything about other uses of mobile devices while operating a motor vehicle? Even Steve Largent, the president of the industry’s trade association CTIA, says: "There’s probably little difference between making a phone call and texting. If you have to take your eyes off the road, it can’t be a good thing." And James E. Katz, the director for the Center for Mobile Communications Studies at Rutgers University, says: "The landfill-sized accumulation of studies about the dangers of using these devices while driving should have prompted a much more engaged posture on the part of the industry to be leaders to attempt to rein in this behavior,"
.
But the industry continues to say one thing while acting just the opposite. Here are words from Sprint’s materials accompanying one of its PCS phones: "When using your Sprint PCS phone in the car, focus on driving, not talking, and use your hands-free kit. Failure to follow these instructions may lead to serious personal injury and possibly property damage." There it is: In Sprint’s own words, it says to use hands-free devices when driving. Yet, when California Assemblyman Joe Simitian of Palo Alto tried to introduce legislation to codify "the very practices this industry has been promoting for the last several years," it was opposed by AT&T, Cingular and, yes, Sprint, who said their education of drivers was all that was needed. (Verizon, it should be noted, supported Simitian’s proposed legislation, which, because of heavy industry lobbying efforts, never made it out of committee).
Largent now admits opposing Simitian’s bill was a mistake. Yet the industry continues to promote using mobile devices while driving. A recent Sprint television ad shows a driver and four passengers in a car. The ad is for a mobile wireless service that allows people to use the Internet not just on phones but also computers. "Right now, five co-workers are working from the road using a ‘Mi-Fi,’ a mobile hotspot," the voiceover says. One person is checking e-mail, another is streaming music, a third is using Mapquest and two are downloading and revising a presentation, the voice says. And a recent ad in People magazine for the Nuvifone, sold by AT&T, shows a woman explaining how she got directions from her phone. "I just tapped the address and followed spoken, turn-by-turn directions right to the front door," the ad reads.
So the industry continues to promote activities independent research says kills people, including a lot more innocent people than second hand smoke ever killed. Yes, they are today’s equivalent to cigarette manufactuers. There ought to be a law. In fact, there ought to be a lot of them,
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