Cracking Walnuts with a Hammer: Cellphone Ban Overkill and Misses the Point

Our President and CEO, Dr. Jim Voorhees, was quoted in the Jan. 9 Transport Topics (subscription req’d) in a story about the proposed total cellphone ban. It’s a good story, and as usual, Jim has one of the more colorful quotes.

Dr. Jim Voorhees, our CEO, quoted in Transport Topics. Click the image to be taken to TTnews.com (login required).

 
 
The point Jim makes is that there are a ridiculous amount of distractions in a truck driver’s cab, as well as in everyone’s automobile. Crying babies in backseats, the stereo, CB radios, getting into an argument with your significant other, eating french fries, ladies putting on makeup. Heck, there was a bus driver across the river in Portland, Ore. who was caught reading a Kindle while driving!

But banning cellphones only in trucks makes politicians look good (well, unless the study is flawed, which it was).

Driving is a skill that can be mastered quickly (especially with good training). It requires vigilance, but within a few years of driving, your brain has excess capacity. How many times have you driven home while thinking about work, only to realize you have no real memory of your commute?

The proposed total cellphone ban is both overkill and misses the solution to the distracted driving problem. Hands-free devices allow a person to carry on a conversation just as well as if the person were sitting in the passenger seat. One could argue a hands-free device is safer than an in-cab conversation, because the driver isn’t tempted to try to read the passenger’s face or body language.

The fact is that good driver training about recognizing and dealing with distractions is the best answer. When drivers know what to look for, when they pick up the cues of their own distraction, they tell us that they “shake myself out of it.”