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Speakout: Pay attention! Hang up and drive

Mark Lieberman, Special to the News

Published January 9, 2006 at midnight

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With the recent death of the cyclist who was killed by the driver using his cell phone, I am prompted to ask two questions: where is the outrage over this and when did it become socially acceptable to drive while distracted? If the driver in this case had been drinking and driving, people would be up in arms saying that we need to crack down on people who drive under the influence. But because he was "only" using his cell phone (an activity just as dangerous as DUI), we will merely slap him on the wrist and turn our heads away from the real problem.

It seems that so many more people nowadays are practicing this extremely dangerous activity. Meanwhile, every study ever done - Automobile Association of America, New England Journal of Medicine, Harvard University and the National Transportation Safety Board, to name a few - have all declared that driving while distracted is dangerous and that cell phone use while driving is a leading cause of distraction.

The AAA declared recently that up to 50 percent of accidents in this country today are caused by distracted drivers. That alone should be enough to get our attention (if we weren't so distracted, that is), but we as a society continue to say that it is OK not to pay attention while driving.

In a study several years ago, Harvard learned that several thousand deaths, along with hundreds of thousands of injury accidents, were directly related to cell phone use while driving. Did that get our attention? Apparently not.

The New England Journal of Medicine recently wrote that using a cell phone while driving increases your overall risk of having an accident by nearly 5 percent. This places cell phone users in the same accident risk category as drivers under the influence of alcohol.

Despite all this, we as a society continue to allow this dangerous and deadly activity to persist unabated. I hereby challenge the state legislature to take meaningful action on this issue and work to protect us from ourselves. I also challenge the various police departments to enforce the existing laws against driving while distracted. Wake up, people. Your phone conversation may be more important than your own safety, but it is not more important than the safety of those around you. Hang up and drive!

Mark Lieberman lives in Littleton.