Cell phone ban urged for teen drivers
U.S. transportation safety officials say banning teens from using cell phones while learning to drive should be a national priority.
The National Transportation Safety Board put the proposed restriction on its "most wanted" list of safety improvements for the upcoming year, which also includes older appeals for more states to impose limits on teens' night driving and carrying of passengers.
"Learning to drive and being distracted is a recipe for disaster," Mark Rosenker, the board's acting chairman, said Tuesday at a hearing on the new safety priorities.
"We must do everything we can to reduce these needless deaths and we strongly believe that banning wireless communications devices for teenagers learning to drive will help significantly," Rosenker said.
Highway crashes are the leading cause of death among 15- to 20-year-olds. From 1995 to 2004, about 64,000 young people were killed in traffic accidents, federal statistics show. More than half the fatalities occurred at night.
A survey released by U.S. auto safety regulators earlier this year found that handheld cell phone use among drivers between 16 and 24 increased to 8 percent in 2004, up from 5 percent in 2002 and 3 percent in 2000.
At any given moment in the United States last year, an estimated 8 percent of all motorists, or about 1.2 million drivers, were talking on cell phones while driving, the survey found. The figure was 6 percent in 2002 and 4 percent in 2000.
University of Utah researchers found last spring that teens and young adults on the phone while in a driving simulator reacted as slowly as elderly drivers not using a phone.
The safety board's cell phone recommendation surfaced after a crash in Maryland that killed five people in February 2002. Investigators in that accident said a young woman in her new sport utility vehicle ran off the Washington Beltway, flipped and landed on a minivan in the opposite lane.
The board concluded that the woman, who was killed, was talking on a cell phone at the time of the accident and was probably distracted. Inexperience, unfamiliarity with the SUV, windy conditions and speeding were other likely causes.
Kevin Quinlan, a senior safety board staff member, said elevating the recommended cell phone restriction will give "heightened visibility" to a measure that has achieved some momentum already.
Eleven states and the District of Columbia have imposed some limits on wireless technology while driving. Most prohibit cell phone use by drivers who are getting their license.
Critics of attempts to restrict the use of wireless devices by motorists contend that only a fraction of crashes blamed on distracted driving are related to cell phones.