Just about everyone in Utah seems to think it's a bad idea to phone or text while driving. So who's the dimwit on the smart phone in the next lane? Or in your car?
A bill awaiting next week's start of the Utah Legislature session would ban use of wireless communication devices while driving, and new Salt Lake Tribune poll shows 80 percent of Utahns support restricting cell-phone use by motorists.
At one time or another, though, many drivers are chatting into a phone. National research has suggested that at any given time a tenth of motorists are on the line.
"Driving is a full-time job," said Beverly Atkin, a rural Uintah County resident who participated in the poll. She supports a cell-phone ban but acknowledged in the past having phoned while behind the wheel. She since has decided to let it ring, convinced by word that driving while phoning is just as dangerous as drunken driving.
The Tribune poll, conducted Jan. 8-9 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research and with a 4.5 percent margin of error, found an overwhelming majority of Utah men, women, Republicans, Democrats, Mormons and everyone else wants to dial down cell-phone use by motorists. Among 500 voters surveyed statewide, 75 percent of men and 85 percent of women say they would support "legislation restricting cell-phone use while driving."
Rep. Phil Riesen, D-Holladay, has introduced a bill that would do that -- and more. He wants to bar virtually all electronic communication while driving.
Riesen called phoning and texting behind the wheel a public-safety issue akin to drunken driving. "It's a form of distraction that shouldn't occur in a vehicle," he said.
His bill includes an exemption for drivers who are reporting emergencies, and he said he will amend it to exempt two-way radios after hearing from emergency responders who rely on them.
Lawmakers in the past have resisted phone restrictions for cars, often citing a distaste for limiting personal liberties. It will be no different for some of them this year, and members of the Utah Transportation Commission who heard about the latest proposal at their meeting last month chuckled at its prospects.
"Good luck with that," Commissioner Glen Brown said after hearing the report.
Asked on Friday about the bill, Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman and a former police officer, said he will do all he can to block it. State law already bans swerving out of a lane, he noted, and even imposes penalties for distracted driving that leads to a crash.
"Instead of banning bad behavior," Wimmer said, "we're banning what could possibly lead to bad behavior."
Using a phone may be distracting, but that's no reason to penalize someone who is able to do it safely, Wimmer said. Like Riesen, he said alcohol offers a fair analogy.
"You can have a beer at lunch and go driving as long as you're not intoxicated and you're not causing a hazard on the road," he said. "The same standard should probably apply."
Driving while phoning is as dangerous as driving with the legally drunk blood-alcohol content of 0.08, according to University of Utah researchers. Subjects who operated a driving simulator on campus in 2006 while talking on the phone performed statistically the same as those at the legal alcohol limit: crashing four times as often as when unimpaired.
"Most people would never think about getting behind the wheel if they're drunk, but they're perfectly willing to drive while talking on the phone," said psychology professor David Strayer, a lead researcher on the U. project.
Strayer's team also found that hands-free phones are no safer. A growing list of states has banned the use of hand-held phones by drivers, but not hands-free sets, as Riesen's bill would do. Banning one but not the other makes no sense to Strayer.
"The impairments aren't because your hands aren't on the wheel," he said, "it's because your brain isn't on the road."
Now the U. is studying the genetics of those who perform best behind the wheel while phoning, Strayer said. It could be that some are naturally inclined to handle distractions, the way fighter pilots seem born to multitask, he said. Most people, though, overestimate their abilities.
"They say, 'It's the other guy. It's not me [who's dangerous],' " Strayer said. "Our studies show it's pretty much everybody."
Sandy Milman of Farmington gets all the empirical evidence she needs on her daily Interstate 15 commute from Farmington to Clearfield.
"Every day I drive to work I see people texting -- you can tell," she said. "They swerve. They go slower. They get in the other lanes."
She also sees pedestrians oblivious to their surroundings, including one who walked into a post at Salt Lake City's Gateway mall while talking on the phone.
"I thought he was kidding, and I started laughing," she said. "He gave me a really awful look."
Milman answered an emphatic "yes" to the poll question.
