Driving Under the Influence of a Cell Phone is as Dangerous as DUI Drunk Driving. The Attentional Mechanism Suggests That The Cell Phone Impaired May be Even More Dangerous to Motorcyclists. All Cell Phone Use While Driving Must Be Outlawed. This is a Declaration of War.

Introduction.

1. Cell Phone Impaired Drivers Are a Menace on Our Streets, They are At Least As Impaired and Dangerous As DUI Drunk Drivers, And Significantly More Likely to Cause Accidents.

2. Cell Phone Impaired Drivers May Pose An Even Greater Danger To Motorcyclists Than Has Been Discovered To Be The Risk To Motorists Generally. This is Demonstrated (1) By the “Pre-Cell-Phone-Age” Statistics Which Demonstrated that Motorcyclists Are Disproportionately At Risk Resulting from Inattentive Auto Drivers; (2) By The Evidence That Motorcycle Intersection and Right of Way Violation Accidents In Particular Are the Result of Auto Driver “Inattentional Blindness” to Motorcyclists; and (3) By the Distinct Mechanism of Cell Phone Attentional Impairment Which Combined With Auto Driver “Inattentional Blindness” to Motorcycles Suggests the Likelihood of Additive or Synergistic Auto Driver Attentional Impairment Specific For Motorcyclists.

The evidence presented in the preceding section we consider sufficient to justify legislation to outlaw cell phone use while driving. To quote Professor Strayer:"Just like you put yourself and other people at risk when you drive drunk, you put yourself and others at risk when you use a cell phone and drive.” To quote study co-author, Assistant Professor Frank Drews: “If legislators really want to address driver distraction, then they should consider outlawing cell phone use while driving." Consumer Affairs, June 30, 2006.

There are additional reasons to criminalize the use of cell phones while driving, discussed below, including that the growth in numbers of cell phone users is having the effect to increase traffic congestion and the average lengths of our commutes.

But the question to be answered here is why should motorcyclists in particular want to support or even take the lead in urging our state legislatures to outlaw the use of cell phones while driving.

One answer to that question is that we are more at risk of serious injury and death at the hands of the cell phone impaired than auto drivers who are protected by their thousands of pounds of surrounding metal, interior padding, seat belts, and air bags.

But there is another good reason, and that is that cell phone impaired drivers may pose a much greater risk of causing motorcycle accidents than accidents with other types of vehicles. This has not yet been studied, but we consider that reasonable inferences can be drawn from the existing scientific data. It may be true that scientists at this stage would call it conjecture. But unlike these scientists, we as bikers don’t have the luxury of an indefinite future to determine the precise measurements of the risk, given that our lives will be put at stake perhaps this very afternoon as we ride home from work. In the absence of existing data in point, we suggest that some conclusions can be drawn, evident enough from the statistical information we have already about the most common ways in which auto drivers cause motorcycle accidents, the information yielded by the research on the mechanism of inattentional blindness, and then this most recent research by Strayer, et al., describing the mechanism by which cell phone use impairs driving.

First of all, what we know from the “pre-cell phone age” motorcycle accident studies, that is, studies conducted before cell phones were so commonly in use by the American public, is that fully 2/3 of all multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents were found to result solely from the inattention or negligence of an auto driver, without any fault on the part of the motorcyclist. Two-thirds of that number, or ½ of the total number of multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents were intersection accidents resulting from right of way violations in which an auto driver either entered the intersection or turned left at the intersection into the motorcyclist’s right of way; commonly reporting: “I didn’t see him.” See, e.g., Hurt, H.H., Ouellet, J.V. and Thom, D.R., January, 1981, "Motorcycle Accident Cause Factors and Identification of Countermeasures," Volume 1: Technical Report, Traffic Safety Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90007, Contract No. DOT HS-5-01160 (Final Report). These are indeed the tell tale signs and good solid evidence of “pre-cell phone age” auto driver inattentional blindness specific to motorcycles.

As discussed more fully on the other pages of this Motorcyclists-Against-Dumb-Drivers web site, these intersection right of way violation accidents are not the result of the motorcycle’s smaller size, or “lack of conspicuity,” at least as that term has been used in the lay sense to suggest that auto drivers don’t “see” motorcycles because they are smaller or less “visible.” Motorcycles are just as visible as any car at the distance at which a car can pose a threat to a motorcyclist when pulling out into an intersection or turning left at an intersection into the motorcyclist’s right of way. The reason why auto drivers so commonly pull out into intersections into the right of way of motorcyclists is described instead by the somewhat complex phenomenon of “inattentional blindness.” See, “Inattentional Blindness,” Mack & Rock, 1998, and the wealth of good experimental literature which has followed upon this important landmark work.

The scientific literature on inattentional blindness demonstrates through the results of what are truly ingenious study designs, the mechanisms by which the landscape of visual stimuli which enter our “subconscious” through our eyes is extensively processed, only after which a selected subset of the visual information is permitted through to our “conscious attention.” We may think that what we“see” is similar to what a videotape might record, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. What our eyes perceive is received, true enough, meaning received into the subconscious, but then it is processed, indeed processed extensively, and then only in very late subconscious processing is the "bottleneck" selection process accomplished by which our subconscious “decides” what small subset of the totality of visual information will be allowed to reach our conscious attention.

Many of the criteria utilized by the subconscious to select visual stimuli for conscious attention have been identified, including most important, we believe, in this context, “expectation,” the selection of those stimuli which we “expect” to see (such as cars rather than motorcycles), and “relevance,” those objects which we consider more pertinent to our immediate task objective (in this context, the preferential selection drawing attention to the multi-thousand pound car, truck or bus, which might severely injure or kill the auto driver, in contrast to the lesser “relevance” of a motorcycle, which is likely to pose a much smaller threat to the auto driver).

“Inattentional blindness” describes the phenomenon by which we fail to “see” that which is right in front of us. It is the phenomenon that results from the selection process by which that which is fully apparent, right in front of us, square at the center of our visual field, will be so processed and selected "out" by our subconscious so that it will not reach our conscious attention. And if it is processed but selected not to reach our conscious attention, our conscious experience is indeed that we don’t “see” it. It is the equivalent of the old question, “If a tree falls in a forest with no one there to hear it, does it make a sound.” Well, the answer in this context is “No.” If a visual stimulus is not permitted forward from our subconscious through the bottleneck to our conscious attention, then we don’t “see” it. In the words of Mack and Rock: “Only those objects to which attention is either voluntarily directed or that capture attention at a late stage of processing are perceived. It is as if attention provides the key that unlocks the door dividing unconscious from conscious perception. Without this key, there is no awareness of the stimulus.” Mack and Rock, supra. And this is indeed why, even prior to the advent of cell phones, the auto driver who pulled out in front of a motorcyclist at an intersection into his right of way and crippled or killed him would commonly turn to the police officer wide eyed and say “Uhh, Sorry, Man, I just didn’t see him.”

Now, what we should all be very concerned about as motorcyclists is that the most recent cell phone studies have determined that the mechanism by which cell phones result in driving impairment is by an attentional impairment, a different kind of inattentional blindness, this one resulting from the motorist's shifting attention to the "auditory" stimuli and higher level internal cognitive functions involved in the give and take of cell phone conversation, reducing our capacity to attend to the distinct external visual-spacial stimuli as is essential for safe driving.

To fully appreciate the contribution of cell phone driving impairment to degrade motorcyclist safety, either as separate source of danger or as potential synergistic factor in combination with preexisting auto driver inattentional blindness for motorcyclists, it is essential to understand the nature of cell phone driving impairment as illustrated by the available scientific literature.

We consider these Strayer, et al. studies particularly important in terms of motorcyclist safety. This is because of the earlier observations of Harry Hurt, 1981, and others that the greatest "pre-cell-phone-age" contributor to the incidence of multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents was auto driver inattention to motorcyclists; and because this preexisting auto driver inattentional blindness specific to motorcyclists is at least exacerbated linearly and possibly synergistically when the auto driver is on the phone, involved in separate pathway auditory and higher level cognitive tasks different from the pathway responsible for processing visual stimuli.

On the one hand we have the preexisting auto driver inattentional blindness which the IB literature suggests most likely results from such factors as failure to “expect” a motorcycle and internal values of reduced “relevance” attached to oncoming motorcycles, evident prior to the age of common use of cell phones, and now an entirely different mechanism of attentional impairment resulting from the use of cell phones while driving, in which conscious attention is diverted from the visual-spacial-manual tasks essential for driving to the internal cognitive give and take of the cell phone conversation. Each interfere with the auto driver's ability to "see" what is directly in front of his eyes. Referring to driving under the influence of cell phones, Strayer pointed out: “Even when participants direct their gaze at objects in the driving environment, they often fail to ‘see’ them when they are talking on a cell phone because attention has been directed away from the external environment and toward an internal, cognitive context associated with the phone conversation.” Strayer, 2006, supra.

The “multi-tasking” use of the cell phone while driving is considered by Strayer, et al. likely to be substantially more distracting because it is “cognitively engaging.” “Drivers [while using cell phones] are more likely to miss critical traffic signals (traffic lights, a vehicle breaking in front of the driver, etc.), slower to respond to signals that they do detect, and more likely to be involved in ... collisions when they are conversing on a cell phone [than baseline or drunk drivers.] ... In the case of the cell phone driver, the impairments appear to be attributable, in large part, to the diversion of attention from the processing of information necessary for the safe operation of a motor vehicle.” Strayer, et al., 2006, supra. (Please note that the above list of traffic signal and braking scenarios is not meant to be exclusive in terms of driving activities impaired by cell phone use; it just represents the driving scenarios which Strayer has chosen thus far to test. He has not yet tested, for example, auto driver impairment of recognition of visual stimuli essential to respect rights of way at intersections. Our concern indeed is that cell phone driver impairment may be even more pronounced as the emotional charge of the conversation and the difficulty of the driving tasks increase.)

In another set of experiments, Strayer et al. examined the effect of hands-free cell phone conversation to assess whether impairment of drivers reactions to traffic signals and vehicles braking in front of them might properly be attributed to withdrawal of attention from the scene “yielding a form of inattention blindness" similar but distinct from the intattentional blindness identified by Mack & Rock, given that cell phone induced inattentional blindness results from auditory-cognitive interference with visual-spacial perception rather than the selective processing of competing visual stimuli evident in Mack and Rock's research. See, e.g., Strayer, D. L., Drews, F. A. & Johnston, W. A. (2003). “Cell Phone Induced Failures of Visual Attention During Simulated Driving.” Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol 9, pp. 23-23. The authors concluded: “These data extend our earlier observations of impaired detection and reaction to traffic signals [citations omitted] and sluggish reaction to brake lights when participants are engaged in cell phone conversations. We suggest that even when participants are directing their gaze at objects in the driving environment that they may fail to 'see' them because attention is directed elsewhere. The indication of cell phone-induced inattention blindness extends laboratory-based demonstrations of apparent failures of visual attention to the driving domain. (Mack & Rock, ['Inattentional Blindness'], 1998).”

Strayer, et al. distinguished his own findings of "dual pathway" cell phone conversation inattentional blindness from the distinct single pathway inattentional blindness described by Mack & Rock resulting from the subconscious competition for attention for multiple visual stimuli. “One important difference between these earlier studies and our present work is that the former involved presentation of simultaneous (and often overlapping) visual images, whereas our research involved the combination of visual (i.e., the driving environment) and auditory (i.e., the cell phone conversation) information. This suggests that the locus of the effect is at a central attentional level and not due to structural interference or overload of a perceptual or response channel.” We consider this important to our thesis that the combination of the two distinct pathway attentional impairments likely combine to result in even more profound driving impairment of the auto driver's ability to "see" the oncoming motorcycle, indeed, possibly much more profound impairment as the interaction may produce a synergistic effect.

There is converging neurological evidence from investigators at Johns Hopkins providing additional support for Stayer’s conclusions with regard to the "attentional" interference of auditory cell phone conversation on capacity to detect visual stimuli in the driving environment. Shomstein, S., Yantis, S. “Control of Attention Shifts Between Vision and Audition in Human Cortex.” The Journal of Neuroscience, November 24, 2004, 24(47):10702-10706. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) Stromstein and Yantis recorded their experimental subjects’ brain activity while involved in shifts back and forth between visual and auditory activity. Significantly, they noted that when attention was shifted to one, either visual or auditory stimuli, the parts of the brain associated with the other demonstrated reduced activity. This would imply a zero sum trade off between auditory and visual attention. Suggesting that there is an additional attentional cost to "switching" between the auditory and visual, Shomstein and Yantis observed that there was an additional, separate, "transitional" brain function evident in bursts of activity in certain aspects of the brain as attention was redirected. The Shomstien and Yantis research provides neurological support now to the experimental evidence of Strayer et al. that the mechanism of cell phone driving impairment is a form of “inattentional blindness” (supporting also Strayer's persuasive anticipatory rebuttal to theoretical models of diverted attention that might be argued to suggest that cell phone conversation, “an auditory-verbal-vocal task,” can be successfully “timeshared” with driving, “a visual-spacial-manual task.”)

”Selective attention contributes to perceptual efficiency by modulating cortical activity according to task demands. Visual attention is controlled by activity in posterior parietal and superior frontal cortices, but little is known about the neural basis of attentional control within and between other sensory modalities. We examined human brain activity during attention shifts between vision and audition. Attention shifts from vision to audition caused increased activity in auditory cortex and decreased activity in visual cortex and vice versa, reflecting the effects of attention on sensory representations. Posterior parietal and superior prefrontal cortices exhibited transient increases in activity that were time locked to the initiation of voluntary attention shifts between vision and audition. These findings reveal that the attentional control functions of posterior parietal and superior prefrontal cortices are not limited to the visual domain but also include the control of crossmodal shifts of attention.” Id.

In an interview, professor Yantis made plain the significance of his findings on the specific issue of cell phone driving impairment:“Our research helps explain why talking on a cell phone can impair driving performance, even when the driver is using a hands-free device ... Directing attention to listening effectively 'turns down the volume' on input to the visual parts of the brain. The evidence we have right now strongly suggests that attention is strictly limited -- a zero-sum game. When attention is deployed to one modality -- say, in this case, talking on a cell phone -- it necessarily extracts a cost on another modality -- in this case, the visual task of driving." Consumer Affairs, June 22, 2005.

Significantly, evidence that the attentional impairment associated with cell phone use can act as an on-off switch, competent to block out even the most crucial of visual stimuli essential for safe driving, Strayer found that cell phone inattentional blindness extended even to stimuli which would otherwise be considered preferentially or automatically sufficient to elicit attention. In one study, Strayer, et al. found that “cell phone conversations interfere with the automatic attention-capturing properties of sudden onset stimuli occurring in the driving environment.” Strayer, supra, 2003. The significance of the finding is that stimuli that appear as sudden onsets are "thought to capture attention automatically,” Id., and so the fact that the cell phone impaired do not "see" sudden onset events illustrates the indiscriminate blindness of the cell phone impaired while attention is directed to internal-cognitive stimuli and away from external-visual stimuli.

Strayer et al. preemptively rebutted any potential argument that when drivers engage in cell phone conversation they may attempt to strategically reallocate attention from the processing of less relevant information in the driving scene (e.g., billboards) to the cell phone conversation while continuing to give highest priority to the processing of task-relevant information in the driving scene (e.g., the car in front of them). These experiments included eye tracking devices and, as observed by Strayer, that data “did not provide support for this [prioritization] interpretation because participants looked at billboards equally often in single and dual task conditions.” Id. Attention essential to the detection of all visual stimuli was impaired when the driver was involved in cell phone conversation, that is, stimuli meaningful to the driving task and stimuli not meaningful to the driving task alike.

Strayer et al., bolstered this conclusion by their observation that “Any reasonable account of task relevance would have to include attending to the vehicle immediately in front of the driver. Nevertheless, the car following paradigm ... found significant impairments in driving performance when participants were conversing on a hands-free cell phone. If participants were attempting to focus on more task-relevant information in the driving scene, then this strategy proved to be inadequate because dual-task interference was observed even with task-relevant information in the driving scene. We suggest that the most straightforward interpretation of the dual task deficits in explicit memory .. is that attention was diverted from the visual scene immediately associated with driving (of both higher and lower relevance) to the cell phone conversation.”

The capacity for “change detection” as applied to complex traffic scenes, and in particular the ability to notice significant changes, is extremely important for safe driving. This also was the subject of one Strayer experiment to test whether it was possible that the mind was capable of prioritizing so that it could attend to the telephone conversation and still attend to the meaningful changes in the complex visual landscape while driving. The answer was no, that there was no apparent prioritizing of attention to significant changes in the driving environment while participants were engaged in conversation on the cell phone. The drivers whose attention was impaired by cell phone conversation consistently failed to see both meaningful and less meaningful changes in the traffic scenes essentially indiscriminately. McCarley, J.S., Vais, M.J., Pringle, H., Kamer, A.F., Irwin, D.E., & Strayer, D.L. (2004) “Conversation Disrupts Change Detection in Complex Traffic Scenes.” Human Factors, 46, 424-436.

In subsequent study results Strayer, et al. found that even those objects to which the drivers affixed their eyes they often failed to “see” while conversing on the telephone. Strayer again explicitly attributed the phenomenon to cell phone induced inattentional blindness. Strayer, D. L., Cooper, J. M., & Drews, F. A. (2004). “What do Drivers Fail to See When Conversing on a Cell Phone?" In the Proceedings of the 48nd Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (pp 2213-2217).

Significantly, Strayer, et al. noted: “We found that even when participants looked directly at objects in the driving environment, they were less likely to create a durable memory of those objects if they were conversing on a cell phone. Moreover, this pattern was obtained for objects of both high and low relevance, suggesting that very little semantic analysis of the objects occurs outside the restricted focus of attention. These data support the inattention-blindness interpretation in which disruptive effects of cell phone conversations on driving are due in large part to the diversion of attention from driving to the phone conversation. We suggest that even when participants are directing their gaze at objects in the driving environment they may fail to ‘see’ them when they are on the phone because attention is directed elsewhere.” Id. See also, Strayer, D. L., Drews, F. A., & Johnston, W. A. (2003). “Are We Being Driven to Distraction?” Public Policy Perspectives, Vol. 16, 1-2. (Published by the Center for Public Policy and Administration, University of Utah) [“We found that even when drivers were directing their gaze at objects in the driving environment that they often failed to see them because attention was directed elsewhere. Thus, talking on a cell phone creates a form of inattention blindness, making drivers less aware of important information in the driving scene.”]

Applying these lessons here in attempting to sort out the effect of the convergence of preexisting auto driver inattentional blindness for motorcyclists, deriving from factors such as "expectation" and "relevance," and the attention impairment resulting from back and forth shifting from the "auditory-internal-cognitive" to "visual-spacial" and back while driving under the influence of a cell phone, these studies make clear that each exacts its own toll upon the driver's capacity to "see" the motorcyclists. It is as if before the advent of cell phones a substantial percentage of auto drivers were essentially unable to distinguish motorcycles from the visual background, while now we face the same percentage of motorists with the same general attention deficit for motorcyclists, except that now, another 10 percent of all the auto drivers are involved in cell phone driving, attention shifting, putting on and taking off and putting on again their inattentional blindfolds while they drive.

These factors combined suggest that cell phone use while driving may have an even larger, and perhaps a much larger effect on driver inattention to motorcyclists due to the additive or synergistic convergence of the preexisting auto driver attention deficit for auto drivers, now complicated by this epidemic of DUI level cell phone inattentional blindness currently affecting 10 percent of drivers on the road at any given moment. It may be worse. The experimental studies so far have focused only on relatively simple driving tasks such as recognizing traffic signals, responding to a forward braking car, recognizing sudden events and significant changes in the driving landscape. We suggest that the level of cell phone impairment, particularly when combined with the preexisting auto driver attention deficit specific for motorcyclists, may be much more potent in more complex traffic scenarios, such as when the motorist must assess whether to enter an intersection or turn left at an intersection, potentially into the right of way of another. What appears certain is that the impairment will not be less as the difficulty level rises, even if the driver subjectively considers that the visual stimuli at intersections are more "important" or "meaningful" since as Strayer made plain, cell phone induced inattentional blandness is indiscriminate and specifically not selective for the less meaningful. Instead, we suggest that the likelihood is that the impairment will be greater, given that the more complex driving task requires significantly more visual information at a time when the driver's zero-sum attention is divided. Given the preexisting auto driver attention deficit for motorcyclists, the concern is that drivers under the influence of cell phones may be selectively much more dangerous for motorcyclists than for drivers of other vehicles. Both the preexisting deficit and call phone driving impairment derive from inattentional blindness, and while moderated differently each have the same effect to lead the driver to fail to "see" the motorcycle right in front of him. If cell phone conversation results in DUI level impairment as measured for the recognition of traffic signals and braking cars, what level of impairment pertains when the auto driver is already burdened with an attention deficit for motorcycles? This is a question which can only be answered definitively by further research; but in the meantime we suggest that the attentional effect is likely either additive or synergistic. Particularly given that the numbers of those driving under the influence of cell phones are growing at epidemic rates motorcyclists must appreciate the serious and growing danger we face and consider what we can do to avert it.

3. The Use of Cell Phones While Driving Should Be Outlawed. And No Distinction Should be Made Between Handheld and Hands-Free Cell Phone Use.

4. Additional Important Reasons to Ban Cell Phone Use While Driving Include Their Substantial Contribution to Traffic Congestion, and Effect to Increase the Length of Driver Commutes for All Drivers. These Facts Also Undermine The Argument that the Use of Cell Phones While Driving is Essential or Contributes to our Economy.

5. Are Laws Outlawing All Cell Phone Use While Driving Practically Achievable?

During the last several years laws have been proposed in most states to ban outright the use of cell phones while driving. Debate has raged, and yet no state has met the challenge. Some states ban the use of cell phones by bus drivers, others ban cell phone use by minors, but the only general laws enacted applicable to adults so far have been laws prohibiting only the use of handheld cell phones.

Laws banning only handheld cell phones while driving are at best useless, calculated to have no impact whatsoever on this spreading epidemic of cell phone use while driving, and certainly can have no impact upon the severity of driver impairment. All that cell phone users need to do to continue to use their cell phones while driving is purchase a hands-free cell phone; and, as we've learned, hands free cell phone users are just as dangerous as those who use handheld cell phones. They are all DUI level impaired, and four times more likely to cause an accident than those who refrain from conversing over the cell phone while driving. Indeed we suggest that laws banning only handheld cell phone use while driving are worse than no law at all because they have the detrimental effect to reinforce the auto driver's "disconnected" perception that his driving while engaged in cell phone conversation is unimpaired.

Success in this war can only be measured by the achievement of complete bans on cell phone use while driving; anything short of that is defeat. Furthermore, it is essential that the legislated penalties be severe, meaning lengthy drivers license suspensions and then jail time for repeat offenders, similar to penalties for DUI drunk driving. In other states where handheld cell phone bans have been adopted with $20 fines for the first offense and $40 fines for the second offense, the measured incidence of handheld cell phone use while driving went down only for the first several months following enactment of the ban and then returned to pre-ban levels.

The legislative proponents of complete cell phone driving bans continue to fall short of the votes necessary to overcome those proposing the "alternative" of useless handheld cell phone bans. As recently as this July, 2006, the California Senate passed a handheld cell phone ban which appears likely soon to pass the Assembly and unfortunately, likely also to be signed into law by our biker Governor. Yet here at Motorcyclists-Against-Dumb Drivers we feel encouraged that we are approaching the moment when advocacy can turn the tide, when we will overcome the cell phone industry lobbying, and the failures of courage exhibited by our lawmakers, afraid to impose meaningful restrictions on the cell phone toting majority.

We are encouraged because we feel we have a powerful simple message now which we can carry to the public to effectively sway public opinion. We also have overwhelming scientific evidence now, reviewed in the preceding sections of this article, which we consider fully competent to overwhelm the sophistry which has heretofore characterized the pitch for restricting only the use of handheld cell phones while driving. In addition we perceive that there is a rapidly changing driving environment resulting from the epidemic increase in cell phone use while driving which we believe is rapidly producing a political imperative for a complete ban on cell phone use.

First, in terms of educating the public. The positive fact is that we have a simple, straightforward and powerful message, notwithstanding the breadth and complexity the converging multi-disciplinary scientific support. The message is "Driving under the influence of any cell phone is as dangerous as DUI drunk driving." We suggest that this message is "powerful" because DUI level driving impairment has already been recognized and accepted as a benchmark sufficient to require prohibition, stiff penalization and criminalization. "DUI level impairment" also has an emotional charge, a now generally accepted connotation of contemptibility upon which to build public sentiment against all cell phone use while driving. The most powerful lead message to the public must be that cell phone conversation while driving is as dangerous as DUI drunk driving. Next, as interest is captured with the initial message the public will be willing to consider additional information, including that describing the magnitude of this public health issue, to wit, that 1 in 10 motorists on the highways at any daylight moment are driving under the influence of cell phones, actively engaged in cell conversation, and that literally thousands upon thousands are being maimed and killed by the DUI cell phone impaired every year in every state in the Union. Next, or just as soon as the handheld law proponents begin interfering, the public needs to be informed that it is not "holding" the handheld phone which results in the DUI level driving impairment; rather, it is the powerful distraction of limited available driver attention to the cell phone conversation, away from the visual driving environment.

Getting through to sufficient numbers of our legislators to achieve complete bans on cell phone use while driving has been complicated heretofore both by cell phone industry lobbying and by the cowardice of legislators more concerned about a public backlash if they actually "take away" their cell phones while driving. Interestingly, the cell phone industry appears to be backing off its lobbying efforts, with only one cell phone company, Nextel, actively involved in lobbying against banning cell phone use in the California. Encouraging also is that public opinion appears to be shifting; large, some legitimate polls beginning to show that the majority of the public would favor a ban on all cell phone use while driving.

With the still increasing use of cell phones while driving, it appears now certain that laws effectively outlawing all cell phone use while driving will ultimately be essential, at least in metropolitan areas, if only to relieve city congestions, ease traffic flow and shorten worker commutes. Most cities will not have the choice. Already they have used every technology available, from subsidized mass transit to time-of-day computer fine-tuned traffic light sequencing, but with 10 percent of drivers on the road at any given daylight moment taking 19 percent more time to get back to flow of traffic speed after each braking episode, all the good work of traffic planners and engineers is quickly being overcome. As cell phone use while driving continues to increase from 10 percent driving under the influence of their cell phones this year to 11 or 12 percent next year, and with fewer and fewer unimpaired drivers on the streets capable of avoiding the increasing hazards created by the epidemic numbers of the DUI cell phone impaired, our streets will become more and more dangerous, an impending war zone. The cell phone associated injury and death are predicted to climb multiplititively, and policy-makers will find it increasingly difficult to ignore the caskets and broken bodies filling our cemeteries and nursing homes along the highways in the trail of the DUI cell phone impaired.

In terms of the present majority of the politicians who have successfully resisted effective cell phone bans in every state of the United States, expect from them nothing but continued prevarication in the short term. Advocates of effective cell phone bans will need to be prepared to call them on their dishonesty in the service of their cowardice. One concern is that the states are now in the process of "creating facts," actually non-scientific "falacies," to undermine future efforts to obtain cell phone bans, very similar to what NHTSA is doing now with its post helmet law repeal raw data comparisons. Indeed NHTSA has urged the states to instruct their law enforcement agencies collect the same kind of raw anecdotal data it has used commonly in recent years to defend its failed, paternalistic motorcycle safety policies, all without regard to the scientific method, apparently now for the purpose of rebutting the abundant, quality, epidemiological and controlled experimental cell phone study results obtained according proper scientific methodology.

Experience has demonstrated that in future efforts to obtain effective cell phone bans it will be important for us to be prepared to demonstrate persuasively the scientific invalidity of politically motivated data misrepresentation. It is utterly absurd that anecdotal data collected without regard to the scientific method should form any part of the debate given the abundance of epidemiological and controlled experimental studies both conducted according to the scientific method and published in peer reviewed scientific journals. But faced with lopsided scientific evidence contrary to their political positions these politicians will rally behind even the most patently lousy of haphazard collections of meaningless raw "data." We are all too familiar with the practice psudoscientific misrepresentation from our experience with NHTSA's strident efforts to justify its longstanding failed "motorcycle safety" agenda, historically focused so myopically on "what bikers wear." For illustrative purposes here we will take just the latest example from the most recent "cell phone ban debate" in California.

As in each of these legislative debates, there are legislators who don't want any ban on cell phone use while driving, those who want a complete ban, and those who want only to ban handheld cell phones. As has occurred in every other state, it is those who seek the "compromise" of banning only handheld cell phones who are now poised to succeed in California, possibly in the next few days, and it will be, according to the Los Angeles Times, specifically because of the "boost" to handheld law proponents delivered on eve of voting by an absurd collection of haphazardly obtained anecdotal data compiled from CHP accident reports and then blatantly misrepresented by the lead handheld cell ban proponent. We will discuss this data, and demonstrate why it is meaningless and how it was misrepresented. But first, it is indeed ironic that handheld cell phone proponents should have succeeded in every state in which legislation has been enacted. Certainly, to be fair, a legislator can arrive an honest position that we should not ban cell phones at all, e.g., based on some shortsighted economic bean counting cost-benefit analysis, and, obviously an honest position can be taken that all cell phone use while driving should be banned, as we have urged here based upon the science, but there is no honest scientific or policy rational for banning the use of only handheld cell phones. There is no difference between handheld and hands-free cell phone use in the consequent DUI level driving impairment or 4 fold likelihood of causing an accident. Yet proponents of handheld cell phone bans prevail. And one reason is that there is a majority of dishonest politicians who want desperately to "appear" to be doing "something" about the carnage resulting from epidemic driving under the influence of cell phones, but, who don't want to do anything that poses the risk of imposing on the majority of their constituency. Now, turning to this most recent prevarication use to turn the tide in California to a ban on handheld cell phones only, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, California State Senator "Simitian's efforts to focus on the hand-held cell phone received a boost from statistics that the California Highway Patrol began compiling in 2004. That year, police reported 775 accidents — including five fatalities — in which a driver at fault was using a hand-held cell phone. There were only 28 reports of accidents caused by drivers with hands-free phones." Los Angeles Times, July 13, 2006.

These "statistics" are utterly meaningless, as Mr. Simitian must surely know, unless he's a complete idiot; and shame on the Los Angeles Times for failing to point it out. Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers has come to the conclusion generally, in the motorcycle safety debate, in the freedom debate, and in our current effort to obtain effective bans on all cell phone use while driving, that some politicians will only stop misrepresenting the facts in the service of the politically expedient when they are confronted with anger, contempt, and persuasive rebuttal. This type of raw, anecdotal data, "775 accidents attributed to handheld cell phones, 28 to hands-free cell phones," is indeed meaningless, but unfortunately, for no good reason, it can be particularly effective in misleading the public, which is why politicians seize upon it. These anecdotal data compilations insult the intelligence of Mr. Simitian's intended audience, his fellow legislators, the public and the news media; but he gets away with it.

The data are meaningless for way too many reasons to list. First of all, to neutralize all similar data, please understand that in science anecdotal reports are useful only to raise hypotheses, never as proof. Furthermore, rather obviously, these data were neither collected nor interpreted according to the scientific method. They are misleading principally for two gross and obvious reasons. First, the data, given the method of their collection, surely grossly under-represent the number of accidents and deaths resulting from both handheld and hands-free cell phones, probably by a factor of 20 or 50 or more, which has consequences both in terms of its potential to mislead as to the magnitude of the problem and as a breading ground for spurious blips or spurious "correlations" resulting from the hapahazard method by which only this small percentage of the total data points are identified. Second, by this data Simitian makes it appear to his lay audience that the use of a handheld cell phone use is "more dangerous" than use of a hands-free cell phone, which is an utterly absurd conclusion. Indeed these data which the Los Angeles Times cited as providing a "boost" to Simitian's limited handheld cell phone ban provide absolutely no meaningful information at all to support that position.

First, and only because it is the most annoying, it is utter sophistry to suggest that a relative risk can be derived, or that somehow comparing the 775 accidents attributed to handheld cell phones with 28 accidents resulting from the use of hands-free cell phones is somehow evidence that the use handheld cell phone use while driving is any more dangerous than hands-free cell phone use while driving. At best, these are numerators without denominators! Apples and oranges. They cannot be compared. The two denominators are (1) the numbers of drivers using handheld devices at any given moment in time during 2004, and (2) the number using hands-free devices at any given moment in time during 2004. Pretending only for sake of this explanation that these raw accident data were reliably collected according to some appropriate scientific methodology, which is clearly not true, the only formula to obtain a meaningful relative risk would be to compare the 775 accidents over the total number of drivers using handheld devices controlled for time/use with the 28 accidents over the total number of drivers using hands-free cell phones controlled for time/use. Then we would at least have numerators and denominators! We can back into this gross "relative risk" again here just for the futile exercise, only to illustrate how a relative risk might be calculated, if we can all first recognize that the product yielded will still not be in the least bit scientifically valid given the lack of quality of the underlying raw data. (Just to point out perhaps the most obvious "methodological failure" in this entirely haphazard CHP "data collection process," consider how the CHP officer must have come to his conclusion that an accident was caused by cell phone distraction, when he wasn't present to observe the incident. It is highly unlikely that many of these data points resulted from a driver's admission that he was distracted by his phone, so the bulk of the data would derive presumably from reports of victims and witnesses that the driver was using his cell phone immediately prior to the accident. There is absolutely no reason to believe that victims and accident witnesses, looking in from outside the car, should be equally able or equally likely to recognize a driver using a handheld cell phone as opposed to a hands-free cell phone; indeed, we would suspect that drivers using handheld cell phones might well be significantly more obvious to potential witnesses, leading to the numbers of police reports of handheld cell phone contribution to accidents being significantly over-reported in comparison to hands-free call phone contribution to accidents).

But now turning to the reanalysis, ignoring the lousy quality of the underlying "data," just adding the denominators to the equation, lets see how far off Mr. Simitian's "statistical" misrepresentation was. According to NHTSA/NOPUS, as of 2004, the year that the CHP data Simitian cited was collected, 8 percent of auto drivers on our American streets and highways were under the influence of cell phones, but only 0.4 percent were using hands-free cell phones. The number using handheld cell phones while driving in 2004 obviously far exceeded the number of hands-free cell phone users, these being the "demominators," which as we will show, eliminates the bulk of the disparity in the gross numbers identified as having been haphazardly collected by the CHP and then serving as the apples and oranges compaired by Simitian. Specifically, 7.6 percent of drivers at any given daylight moment in 2004 were using handheld cell phones and 0.4 percent were using hands-free cell phones. Those are the denominators! (Again, not good scientific denominators, but certainly better than no denominators!) That is roughly 20 handheld cell phone users for every one hands-free cell phone user on the streets actively involved in cell phone conversation at any given moment in time, as of 2004, nationally. Inserting the denominators below the numerators to arrive at the relative risk, yields (775/20) or 38 handheld cell phone associated accidents compared to 28 hands-free cell phone related accidents, 38/28, yielding a relative risk of 1.3. This is very different from the 27.7 fold increased risk suggested by the 775/28 handheld/hands-free cell phone accident comparison. Again, while instructive on the magnitude of this legislator's prevarication and his disdain for the critical capacity of his target audiences, please understand that given the lack of quality which characterizes the underlying CHP data, the fact is that there is no meaningful information that can be derived either from the raw CHP numbers or from the comparison. This 1.3 relative risk, if one were to give it any credence at all, we might speculate reflects the greater likelihood that victims and witnesses of accidents will have observed, from outside the car, the perpetrator's use of hendheld cell phone more commonly than handsfree cell phone use; or, it might be for any of a hundred other confounding factors associated with this haphazard collection of anecdotal reports. Clearly this kind of utterly unreliable accumulation of anecdotal data should not be permitted to "boost" the prospects of handheld ban proponants, particularly when we now have the far superior results of the abundance well controlled epidemiolgical and experimental studies conducted according to the scientific method, indeed published in peer review scientific jounals, demonstrating that handheld and hands free cell phone use while driving results in identical driving impairment and the same four fold increased likelihood of causing an accident.

We have the high road and we have the quality, published, scientific evidence on our side, but politicians opposing cell phone bans and those favoring banning only handheld phone use have the initial political advantage just because it is only our most courageous and foresightful legislators who will be willing to risk the short term anger of the large number of their constituents who obviously value their ability to use their phones while driving. A good majority, seventy percent of all auto drivers use their phones while driving, at least some portion of the time, and many do so frequently, indeed so much so that the incidence of driver cell phone use on our streets and highways has risen to 10 percent. Many of those who use cell phones at least recognize that "others" who use cell phones are driving dangerously impaired. Unfortunately, because of the psychological "disconnect," they don't realize that their own driving is impaired. But perhaps fear of the dangers created by the "others" is slowly resulting in the evolving majority who will favor an effective ban. Shortsighted legislators, like Mr. Simitian, who have taken the cowardly political low road advocating what they may certainly see as currently the politically safer non-"solution," may find that soon enough their prevarication and strident efforts to sidetrack the only effective solutions will come home to roost. And they should be informed now that we are taking their names, recording their misrepresentations, and when the time comes to count the death toll resulting from their cowardice and lies, we intend to kick their cowardly political ass'es.

We also have another potentially potent public relations card to play, indeed one which might well ultimately prove the most powerful in appealing to auto driver self-interest. In most states, particularly those with crowded metropolitan areas, there is strong and growing public annoyance with increasing traffic, slowed traffic flow and city congestion. The public education message must be to inform the public accurately that the cell phone impaired are 19 percent slower to regain flow-of-traffic speed following each braking episode, and with 1 in 10 drivers currently actively engaged in cell phone conversation at any given daylight moment this is a major contributor to slowing traffic flow, increasing commute time, and contributing also to city congestion. How do we get this across? Maybe bumper stickers for use in bumper to bumper commutes: “Stuck In Traffic? Don’t Look At Me. Look At the Jerk With the Cell Phone.”

It is very important to all Americans, but motorcyclists in particular, to obtain state bans on all cell phone use while driving. The fact is that motorists who use cell phones while driving are as dangerous as DUI drunk drivers and driving under the influence of cell phones has become epidemic. We are hopeful that comprehensive cell phone bans are achievable, and will be achieved soon, notwithstanding that every state which has considered the issue thus far has opted either not to restrict cell phone use or to ban only handheld cell phone use while driving. We have a simple, clear and powerful message. We have all the quality scientific literature on our side. Political cowardice can be modified by advising the politicians that comprehensive cell phone bans will soon be essential, both to stem the growing tide of resulting human carnage and to avoid the breakdown of city and state transportation systems; informing them also that it is they who will be held accountable when the broken bodies and caskets are counted, accountable both for their prevarication and for their voting history. Please help Motorcyclists-Against-Dumb-Drivers seek a ban on all cell phone use while driving. On another page of this Motorcyclists-Against-Dumb-Drivers web site we will provide a form letter which you may use or adapt to send to your Governor and legislators. As motorcyclists, those most vulnerable to the inattention of the cell phone impaired, lets do our part to advise our state representatives that we want an end to the carnage resulting from motorists driving under the influence of cell phones, and we want it Now.

6. Additional Strategies to Curtail the Use Cell Phones While Driving. Lawsuits to Hold Cell Phone Impaired Drivers Liable For the Injuries and Deaths Resulting From Their “Driving Under the Influence of Their Cell Phones”; Lawsuits to Hold Employers Liable For Injuries/Death Resulting from Employee Business Use of Phones While Driving; And, Lawsuits to Hold the Cell Phone Industry Liable For the Injuries and Death Resulting From Their Public Misinformation Campaigns, For Their Promotion of Cell Phone Use While Riding, and For Their Failure to Warn Accurately of the Dangers of Driving Under the Influence of Cell Phone Conversation.