Commentary: Driver Electronic Device Use—Put Down That Cell Telephone!

NHTSA Notes Washington), the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands. All of these laws except Maryland’s are primary enforcement— an officer may cite a driver for using a handheld cell telephone without any other traffic offense taking place. Thirty-two states, the District of Columbia, and Guam ban text messaging for all drivers. In 5 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, texting laws are primary enforcement, and in the other 4 states these laws only permit secondary enforcement. Many states also ban cell telephone use or texting by novice drivers or school bus drivers. Copies of the 8-page report Driver Electronic Device Use in 2010 can be obtained from the National Center for Statistics and Analysis, NHTSA, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20590 or downloaded from the NHTSA Web site at http://www.distraction.gov/download/research-pdf/8052_ TSF_RN_DriverElectronicDeviceUse_1206111_v4_tag.pdf. Questions about the information presented in this document can be directed to Timothy Pickrell at timothy.pickrell@dot.gov. doi:10.1016/j.annemergmed.2012.03.003 REFERENCE 1. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Driver Electronic Device Use in 2010. Traffic Safety Facts.Washington, DC: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; 2011. Publication DOT HS 811 517. Available at: http://www.distraction.gov/download/ research-pdf/8052_TSF_RN_DriverElectronicDeviceUse_1206111_ v4_tag.pdf. Accessed March 1,2012. COMMENTARY: DRIVER ELECTRONIC DEVICE USE—PUT DOWN THAT CELL TELEPHONE! [Chakravarthy B, Lotfipour S. Commentary: driver electronic device use-put down that cell telephone! Ann Emerg Med. 2012;59:495-496.] You are driving home from work. You’re at a stoplight and suddenly you hear that “bing” your mobile telephone makes when you’ve received a text message or an e-mail. The temptation wells up inside of you to take a glance at your mobile device to see if that message is important. Your internal logic appears to be sound: “I am at a stoplight. I’m not moving. I’ll take a quick peek before the traffic starts to move.” Unfortunately, this dangerous scenario occurs daily on our roadways, and more often than not what is actually occurring is that drivers don’t listen to the warning in their head and are using their mobile devices when actually moving. Obviously this can lead to crashes, property damage, injuries, and death. This form of driver distraction may not seem that foreign to us as emergency physicians because we ourselves are repeatedly tempted to answer that “bing.” What we should remember is all the times we had to break bad news to some loving parents about their son’s or daughter’s death in a motor vehicle crash. The news media have made this clear to far too many Volume , .  : June  communities across the nation, with frequent reports of deaths directly attributable to texting while driving. 1 The recent NHTSA report on driver electronic device use is frustrating in that the visible manipulation of these devices is on the increase, from 0.6% in 2009 to 0.9% in 2010. 2 Since 2003, data collected by the NOPUS has shown a 350% increase during the past 6 years. What is even more worrisome is that these data are difficult to record—for example, drivers using built-in vehicular technology to manipulate their telephones would not be recorded—and it is certain that the numbers described in this study are but the tip of the iceberg and point toward a much larger problem. NOPUS, although a useful tool, has a few key limitations. The study relies on trained observers watching stopped vehicles at about 1,400 intersections across the country, determined by probabilistic sampling. Data collection occurs only between 7 AM and 6 PM for about 3 weeks every June. Although the observers are good at what they do, there is an inherent limitation in relying on a person’s ability to quickly ascertain whether the driver, front passenger, and up to 2 more passengers are texting, speaking on a headset, holding a telephone to their ear, or just chatting with one another in the amount of time an average driver spends stopped at an intersection. Furthermore, because of the nature of the data collection, it is not possible to observe evening or night behaviors, which could be different, particularly for younger drivers driving long after the school day has ended. Finally, the time of year may also affect behaviors. Accordingly, it is quite possible that the data reported here do not fully describe the scope of driver electronic device use. As scientists, we want to be able to quantify how risky a particular behavior might be. Handheld device manipulation while driving is a difficult risk to quantify, but let’s put it in perspective. Driving simulation studies have shown that handheld device manipulation slows a subject’s response time to braking, impairs forward and lateral control of the vehicle, and correlates to more crashes than are experienced by controls who are not driving. 3 Another simulator-based study quantified the risk of using handheld devices when driving to be greater than using alcohol to the legal limit or smoking marijuana. 4 Even more persuasive is a study that showed a 4-fold increase associated with crashes when using a mobile telephone. 5 Clearly, our culture frowns on alcohol and illicit drug use while driving. What we haven’t quite grasped is that the level of distractibility of cell telephone manipulation while driving poses a similar risk. Another striking fact from this NHTSA report is that 32 states, along with the District of Columbia, have made text messaging while driving illegal, yet there has still been an astronomical increase in the number of individuals using electronic devices when driving; at any given daylight moment, about 118,800 drivers in the United States are visibly manipulating their handheld devices. This rate of increase is beyond just that in the number of vehicles on the road, which has increased only slightly during the past years. 6 What it likely Annals of Emergency Medicine 495