Cell phones: technology, impact, and social implications

Wireless telecommunication technologies are rapidly becoming a significant concern in regard to highway safety (Sundeen, 2001). Almost ninety million people subscribe to wireless telephone services, and eighty-five percent of those subscribers use their cell phones while driving. In 1999, two major automobile companies, General Motors and Ford, formed agreements with telecommunications companies that will increase wireless features to include concierge services, web-based information, online e-mail capabilities, CD-ROM access, on-screen and audio navigation technology, and a variety of other information and entertainment services. So, it's full steam ahead for cell phones and wireless technologies despite overwhelming evidence of the hazards of using these devices while driving.

Many drivers are incensed that safety advocates want to ban cell phone use while driving claiming that the laws would be an unnecessary infringement on their personal freedom. This is fueled by a variety of misperceptions such as:

There is no evidence to support that using a cell phone while driving causes accidents.

Cell phone usage isn't any worse than other activities such as eating, putting on makeup, talking to other passengers in the car, tuning a radio, putting in a CD, reading a map or other common activities performed while driving.

Laws already punish careless and reckless drivers, thus there is not need for cell phone legislation.

However, the evidence suggests that cell phone usage does cause more accidents, is more distracting that other activities and that laws are needed to legislate cell phone usage when driving.

1997 article published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) stated that cell phone users are four to five hundred percent more likely to get into traffic accidents than those who do not use them (Morgan Lee Dot Org, 2003). The NEJM article also revealed that the risk of having a traffic accident while using a cell phone is the same as that while driving drunk. Research work by Violanti in 1998 studied data from 223, 137 traffic crashes in Oklahoma from 1992-1995 and concluded that there is a nine-fold increase risk of fatality when cell phones are used while driving.

Contrary to popular belief, cell phone use is more distracting than other activities (An investigation of the safety implications of wireless communications in vehicles. 1997). A study by McKnight and McKnight in 1991 found that manual dialing can be more disruptive than manually tuning a radio.

Subjective assessments by test participants indicated that they were aware of the demanding nature of manually dialing a cellular telephone. Many studies report driver behavior that resembles attempts to compensate for such disruptive effects such as slowing down the vehicle. A study by Violanti and Marshall studied the association between cellular telephone use and eighteen other driver inattention factors and traffic crash risk. Results showed that talking for more than fifty minutes per month on a cellular phone in a vehicle was associated with a 5.59 fold increased risk of a traffic crash over the other factors studied.

Many views and legislation regarding cell phones and driving makes the inaccurate assumption that the source of any interference from cell phone use is due only to peripheral factors such as dialing and holding the phone while conversing.

However, a study conducted by University of Utah researchers of on the simulated driving performance of sixty-four individuals showed otherwise (Strayer, Drews, Albert and Johnston, 2001). The experiment discovered that: that study participants that engaged in cell phone conversations missed twice as many simulated traffic signals as when they were not talking on the cell phone, study participants took longer to react to those signals that they did detect, and that these deficits were equivalent for both hand-held and hands-free cell phone users. The study concluded that legislative initiatives that restrict hand-held devices but permit hands-free devices are not likely to reduce interference from the phone conversation, because the interference is due to central attentional processes rather than other peripheral factors.

The use of cell phones while a vehicle is in motion has already been banned in dozens of countries including Australia, Spain, Israel, Portugal, Italy, Brazil, Chile, Switzerland, Great Britain, Singapore, Taiwan, Sweden, Japan, and Austria (Morgan Lee Dot Org).. Driving with a cell phone was banned in Japan after the number of traffic accidents in this country related to the phones increased by eleven percent from 1997 to 1998. In the month after the law went into effect, the number of accidents caused by drivers using cell phones fell by about seventy-five percent.