Distracted Driving

Despite laws against using a hand-held phone or similar device, a new report shows that people are not putting down their phones.

The state is promoting an app that turns the act of driving without distraction into a competition.

What is stopping us from implementing solutions to prevent distracted driving? We have the technology. The problem is, the smartphone industry doesn't want to use it.

Nowhere is the culture of permissiveness more apparent, or deadly, than in Texas, where about 3,500 people lose their lives in traffic every year. It is one of just four states that doesn't ban texting and driving.

Motorists with smart phones use their devices in 88 out of every 100 trips, according to data collected by Zendrive, a company that assesses driving behavior using the sensors in smart phones. Extrapolating to the entire population, Zendrive estimates there are about 600 million trips involving distracted driving in the U.S. each day.

Distracted driving isn't just about texting -- it's the mental effort of multi-tasking that makes people less alert and more dangerous behind the wheel. As hands-free devices like in-dash, voice-activated computer systems proliferate in new-model cars, they create additional risks. Using these devices can cause lingering distractions for up to 27 seconds after the task is completed, according to new research from AAA [PDF].

Twenty-four-year-old Taja Wilson was killed near the Louisiana bayou in August when a driver swerved on the shoulder where she was walking. Noshat Nahian, age 8, was killed in a Queens crosswalk on his way to school in December by a tractor-trailer driver with a suspended license. Manuel Steeber, 37, was in a wheelchair when he was killed in Minneapolis while trying to cross an intersection with no crosswalk or traffic signal on a 40-mph road. One witness speculated that Steeber must have had a "death wish."

Here's the latest in wishful thinking about distracted driving. A new application called "Drivemode" wants to make it easier for you to use all your mobile apps while you're behind the wheel -- but don't worry it's safe! Because, at least theoretically, you don't actually have to look at your phone.

University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan, over at the New York Times' Economix blog, dug up a 2012 study by Cheng Cheng of Texas A&M University that tells the world nothing new about the currently confused state of laws against distracted driving, and in particular bans on handheld phone use. "Perhaps lawmakers overestimated the benefits of regulating this sort of driver behavior," Mulligan writes. Or perhaps lawmakers didn't pass laws that effectively protect vulnerable road users from dangerous, distracted drivers.