News

National Safety Council calls for a nationwide ban on cell phone use while driving.


Posted on Jan 14, 2009

On Monday, 12 Janurary 2009, the National Safety Council (NSC) stated that the primary source of driver inattention is cell phone use and called for a nationwide ban on talking on all mobile phones, both hand-held and hands-free, while driving.

The NSC, the watchdog consumer group that got states to toughen up their seatbelt and drunk driving laws, is now working on laws for cell phones. They admit that a nationwide ban on cell phones will be controversial and will not happen overnight. In fact cellular companies are already opposing it.  However, according to the National Safety Council, "Years ago we didn't put on seat belts, or people who might have had a drink before driving wouldn't think of it now."

Five states plus the District of Columbia currently have bans on hand-held cell phones while driving: California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Washington.  In all but Washington, it is a primary enforcement, which means a police officer can stop someone soley for using a cell phone while driving; there does not need to be another reason or traffic violation for the stop.

No state currently has a full ban on the use of cell phones (hands-free and hand-held).

Florida currently has no cell phone bans or restrictions on any group of drivers, even school bus drivers can legally chat on their cell phones while driving our children to and from school. Seventeen states plus D.C. have an all-encompassing cell phone ban on school bus drivers.  Florida is one of eight states that have laws in place expressly prohibiting local jurisdictions from enacting restrictions called, which are called preemption laws.

It has been shown that "celling while driving" is like driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. "It's not that your hands aren't on the wheel," said David Strayer, director of the Applied Cognition Laboratory at the University of Utah and a leading researcher on cell phone safety. "It's that your mind is not on the road."

For more information:

Governor's Highway Safety Association 
http://www.ghsa.org/html/stateinfo/laws/cellphone_laws.html

National Safety Counsel Fact-Sheet 
http://www.nsc.org/resources/issues/factsheet.aspx

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I am local Accident Attorney, Jeffrey Meldon, and I strongly believe that public education is the first step in the prevention of and/or recovery from a serious accident. 

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