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CNN Sunday Morning

Is Banning Cell Phones the Answer to Traffic Safety Woes?

Aired June 24, 2001 - 08:22   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: There is a nationwide movement to ban or severely limit cell phone use while driving a vehicle. It is a public safety issue with at least some drivers who talk and drive, posing a risk to others.

With us, to talk more about this, is Jon Cooper, a New York county legislator who favors banning hand-held phones in favor of hands-free phones. And Susan Pikrallidas of AAA, who favors an outright moratorium on talking on the phone while driving.

We welcome you both to the program.

SUSAN PIKRALLIDAS, AAA: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: All right, Susan, let's begin with you. It's time to stop talking and driving.

PIKRALLIDAS: Actually, that's true. Talking on a mobile phone is one of the most dangerous things you can do because it's the conversation that's the distraction. It's an intellectual distraction, and that's why AAA believes that banning hand-held cell phones doesn't get to the issue. What you need to do is get people to not talk on the phone and drive at the same time. By banning hand- held cell phones, you encourage people to use hands-free phones, and you've done nothing about the real distraction, which is the conversation.

O'BRIEN: Well, but doesn't that sort of ignore many other potential distractions which we might encounter while driving, including the kids in the back seat?

PIKRALLIDAS: Oh, absolutely. Mobile phone use is only one of many distractions as we drive. It just happens to be the one that's being focused on right now...

O'BRIEN: But would you like to ban the kids in the back seat?

PIKRALLIDAS: No, and that gets to the point AAA is trying to make. Rather than trying to legislate distractions away, what we need to do is educate people on how to manage them. We need to do a much better job of getting people to understand what distractions are and how to manage them and to drive more safely by focusing on the task at hand, which is driving.

O'BRIEN: So, to be clear, you're asking for sort of a voluntary moratorium, no legislation?

PIKRALLIDAS: Absolutely, but we need to do a lot more education.

O'BRIEN: All right, John, what do you think about all of that? The idea in New York is that the difficult part is pushing the buttons and looking at the phone, and if you put a headset on, you solve the problem. Do you feel that answers the issue?

JON COOPER, NEW YORK LEGISLATOR: No, I don't believe that the law that we passed in Suffolk County, which became the model for the New York state law that's about to be enacted, will solve the problem. We do believe, though, that a ban on hand-held cell phones while driving will make our roads safer and will reduce traffic accidents. The reason that we passed the law in Suffolk was number one, to make Suffolk's roads safer, but also in the hope that it would provide an impetus toward passage of a ban at the state level, and it looks like it has had that desired effect.

O'BRIEN: Why do you think banning just the hand-held aspect of cell phone usage will help matters?

COOPER: It's true that the act of holding a conversation while driving is a distraction in itself, and the only way to completely make the roads safe vis-a-vis cell phone use would be to ban them altogether, but I really don't think that that could ever happen in New York state or the United States, for that matter. Of the 23 or so countries around the world that have enacted regulations of one type of another, I believe that 22 of them have taken the approach we have done, which is to ban the use of hand-held cell phones while driving.

O'BRIEN: And has it worked?

COOPER: Yes, I believe that it has. In Suffolk County, we've already issued about 800 traffic citations to date, and police have reported that compliance for the law has increased greatly since it was enacted January 1st. It's very widely accepted by the public. I believe that the latest statewide poll shows that 87 percent of New Yorkers support a ban on hand-held cell phones...

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: But let me ask you -- Jon, you told me that a lot of tickets have been written, so it's put some revenue in the coffers, which is a good thing, and the compliance is up, but have you been able to parse this thing out? It's very difficult to sort of get down under the hood in this case, if you will, and figure out which distractions might be causing people to run off the road in one way or another?

COOPER: Right, and it's true that there are numerous possible distractions while driving. The difference is that technology has not yet provided us with a safer way to tune a car radio or eat a hamburger or turn around to yell at our kids in the back seat, but recent technological advances have provided us with a safer, more responsible way to talk on a cell phone, and I think it's the responsibility of government to mandate the use of this technology. One thing that we've done in New York state -- or rather, that they're about to do in New York state is they'll be changing the traffic report forms to, for the first time, have a spot on there to indicate whether a cell phone was a contributory factor to an accident, and New York state will be conducting a study over the next couple of years analyzing cell phone use and other driver distractions to see exactly what effect they actually do have on accident rates.

O'BRIEN: Susan, do you think that's a good idea?

PIKRALLIDAS: I think that's a great idea, to begin trying to gather more data on the effect of mobile phones in accidents, but I would have disagree with Mr. Cooper that banning hand-held cell phones is going to make a difference in safety. The foreign countries -- international countries who have done this very thing, banned hand- held cell phones, have not shown any reduction in crashes with mobile phone use, and that is because it is the conversation that's the distraction.

Holding the phone is not the distraction in and of itself. It's the conversation. And by having hand-held phone bans, what you do is kind of drive people underground to put ear plugs on and to have hands-free conversations and you really haven't dealt with the underlying problem, which is the intellectual distraction of a conversation.

O'BRIEN: All right -- go ahead.

COOPER: I just want to say, briefly, I want to disagree with that last point. Before we introduced the law in Suffolk County, we checked with the traffic safety departments and embassies and consulates at about a half-dozen countries around the world, ranging from Brazil to Israel to Italy, and there was a consensus that the laws that they have on the books banning hand-held cell phones did help reduce traffic accidents.

PIKRALLIDAS: There was a consensus, but I don't think the data will back that up.

O'BRIEN: Of course, none of this gets to the issue of newspaper reading, make-up application and shaving, which we've all seen on the way to work. We'll talk about that some other time. Jon Cooper and Susan Pikrallidas, thank you very much for being with us on CNN SUNDAY MORNING.

COOPER: Thank you, Miles.

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