Eideard

The National Transportation Safety Board’s big, bold stroke encouraging all states to prohibit drivers from using cell phones faces a long, tortuous process in the nation’s statehouses…

This political reality stands out: Since states began legislating distracted driving or cell phone use in 2000, none has gone so far as to impose a complete ban on mobile devices behind the wheel, and only one state — Alaska — has considered such a blanket prohibition, just this year…

Barbara Harsha, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, said opponents don’t like big government intrusions and savor their personal freedoms. “This is a controversial issue so you can assume it’s not going to pass right away,” Harsha said. “It’s going to take a long time for legislatures to pass laws, and a long time for states to begin to enforce the laws, and then a long time for behavior to start to change.

“The first seat-belt law was passed in the mid-’80s, and we’re now at 84 percent of drivers who are buckled up nationwide,” even though all states now have laws requiring drivers and passengers to wear seat belts, Harsha said…

In the past 10 years the NTSB has increasingly sought to limit the use of portable electronic devices — recommending bans for novice drivers, school bus drivers and commercial truckers. Tuesday’s recommendation, if adopted by states, would outlaw nonemergency phone calls and texting by operators of every vehicle on the road…

The initiative would apply to hands-free as well as hand-held devices, but devices installed in the vehicle by the manufacturer would be allowed, the NTSB said…

“There’s conflicting evidence” on whether hands-free cell phone conversations would be as unsafe as those by hand-helds, Harsha said, adding that more “definitive research” is needed. “If it shows both are unsafe, then a total ban may make the most sense,” she said.

There already are beaucoup studies proving that distractions are the cause – not the effect. The source of distraction affecting the human brain ranges from your passenger [if you have one] shouting “look at that!” – to noticing a particularly attractive member of the opposite sex in another car [depending on your gender identification I guess] – to a particularly uncomfortable gas pain.

Give mental pause whilst driving today – and reflect upon the artificial need for politicians to pass regulations to impress upon their peers and constituents alike that they’re earning their keep.

Police in France are looking for two attractive female thieves who bared their breasts at a man at a cashpoint to distract him before stealing his money.

The women in their 20s exposed themselves to the victim as he punched his pin code into an ATM machine in Paris.

As he stared at one, the other then withdrew 300 euros from his account before the pair fled with the money.

The incident was captured on CCTV at the cash machine on Paris’s Left Bank, but the women could not be identified, a French police spokesman said.

“We would advise anyone withdrawing cash from a machine to focus on what they are doing and not allow themselves to be distracted, however attractive the view,” the spokesman added.

Har!

Drivers of commercial trucks and buses are prohibited from texting under federal guidelines that U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Tuesday.

“We want the drivers of big rigs and buses and those who share the roads with them to be safe,” LaHood said in a statement. “This is an important safety step, and we will be taking more to eliminate the threat of distracted driving.”

The prohibition is effective immediately. Truck and bus drivers who text while driving commercial vehicles may be subject to civil or criminal penalties of up to $2,750, the Department of Transportation said in a news release.

One of the nation’s largest groups representing professional truck drivers — the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association — expressed support for the goal but dismay at its implementation.

“We very much share in their goal, but their legal justification for taking immediate action raises many concerns.”

Let’s follow the model of Congress and waste several more years talking, talking, taking and providing guarantees for insurance companies.

In 2003, researchers at a federal agency proposed a long-term study of 10,000 drivers to assess the safety risk posed by cellphone use behind the wheel. They sought the study based on evidence that such multitasking was a serious and growing threat on America’s roadways.

But such an ambitious study never happened. And the researchers’ agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress.

Now, the full body of research is being made public for the first time by two consumer advocacy groups, which filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the documents. The Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen provided a copy to The New York Times, which is publishing the documents on its Web site…

Critics say that rationale and the failure of the Transportation Department, which oversees the highway agency, to more vigorously pursue distracted driving has cost lives and allowed to blossom a culture of behind-the-wheel multitasking.

“We’re looking at a problem that could be as bad as drunk driving, and the government has covered it up,” said Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety…

The highway safety researchers estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents overall in 2002.

The researchers also shelved a draft letter they had prepared for Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta to send, warning states that hands-free laws might not solve the problem.

That letter said that hands-free headsets did not eliminate the serious accident risk. The reason: a cellphone conversation itself, not just holding the phone, takes drivers’ focus off the road, studies showed…

At the time, Congress had warned the agency not to use its research to lobby states. Dr. Runge said transit officials told him he could jeopardize billions of dollars of its financing if Congress perceived the agency had crossed the line into lobbying.

Which would be hilarious if we weren’t talking about stupidity while driving and the deaths resulting. This took place in the bowels of a federal administration that made lobbying an Olympic-class sport, after all.

RTFA. If you’re concerned with surviving your daily drive to-and-from work, there’s not much new. Multitasking [what a misnomer] drivers put your own life at risk and they obviously could care less for their own dull glimmer of humanity.

A pair of US inventors are bringing to market a computerized car key that prevents people from chatting on mobile telephones or sending text messages while driving.

Key2SafeDriving adds to a trend of using technology to thwart speeding, drunken driving, and other risky behavior proven to ramp-up the odds of crashing.

Once slipped into a car’s ignition, the key created by US university researcher Xuesong Zhou and Dr Wallace Curry sends a wireless signal to a driver’s mobile phone blocking calls or texting.

Traffic statistics support arguments that mobile telephones are on par with alcohol use when it comes to hurting judgment and reaction times of drivers.

They’re all correct; but, I still chuckle over a mate of mine who was busted while steering with his knees, hamburger in one hand, slurpee in the other. He saw a couple of cops he knew – going the other way in their police car – and he raised the slurpee to say, “Hi” – while taking a bite out of the hamburger at the same time.

They let him go after he finished lunch.