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Pennsylvania cell-phone law put on hold Sponsor waiting for commission report on all technology-related driver distractions Wednesday, June 27, 2001 By Jonathan D. Silver, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A state legislator who couldn't drum up the votes to ban motorists from talking on cell telephones while driving hopes the success of a similar bill in in New York will bolster his cause.
"I think it's a positive sign that a state as big as New York... would take this step," said Chad Davis, chief of staff for state Sen. Joe Conti, R-Doylestown, the Pennsylvania bill's sponsor.
On Monday, the New York Assembly passed the nation's first law that forbids talking on a hand-held cell phone while driving. New York Gov. George Pataki has promised to sign the bill.
Two years ago, Conti introduced similar legislation in Pennsylvania, spurred in part by the death of a 2-year-old girl in his Bucks County district. The girl, Morgan Pena, was killed when a driver who was dialing a cell phone ran a stop sign and crashed into her family's car.
Although Conti's bill went nowhere, the state has taken two other steps that will affect what happens next.
First, Gov. Tom Ridge last year ordered the Pennsylvania State Police to note information about cell phone use in crash reports.
Second, the Joint State Government Commission, a bipartisan legislative research group, has begun a study of driver technology-related distractions, including cell phones. A report is due out in December.
Davis said Conti will wait until the commission's study is complete before putting the bill back for the Legislature.
"I think everybody realizes you're distracted while talking on the phone, but whether that correlates to a drastic increase in accidents is what we're trying to find out," he said.
Data so far from the state police indicates little correlation.
From February through December 2000, troopers compiled data from 47,735 crashes, many involving multiple vehicles, according to Jack Lewis, a state police spokesman. In those crashes, there were 12,239 vehicles that had cell phones in them, although police didn't note whether the vehicles containing the phones caused the accidents.
And there were only 186 drivers who said they were using cell phones at the time of the crashes, about 0.4 percent of all the crashes.
Those results echo findings of a major study released last month by the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, working on behalf of AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
The study concluded that "given the huge increase in reported ownership and use of cellular phones nationwide, one might have expected an increase in the reported number of crashes involving cell phones over the five years covered by the analysis. No such increase was apparent, however."
The AAA study estimated that 8 percent of drivers involved in crashes had been distracted by something inside or outside their vehicles, but that only 1.5 percent of the distracted drivers cited cell phones as the cause of their accidents. That contrasted with 29 percent who said they were distracted by something outside their vehicles; 11 percent who said they were adjusting a radio or CD player; and another 11 percent who said they were talking with other occupants.
Jane Stutts, the lead author of the study, said last night that based on her group's findings, passing laws to regulate cell phone use in cars probably would not lower accident rates that much overall.
On the other hand, she noted that in her group's study, the accidents attributed to cell phones accounted for about 5,000 crashes, and if a law stopped even that many, some would argue it would be worth it.
She also noted that cell phone use may be underreported as a cause of accidents.
"Drivers are not usually reluctant to admit that their baby was screaming or a package fell off the seat or a bee flew in their windows, but they are less likely to admit they were using a cell phone before a collision," she said.
An earlier study in the New England Journal of Medicine claimed that cell phone use does increase the risk of having an accident. The study by Canadian researchers said drivers using cellular telephones were four times more at risk for an accident than when they were not on the phone.
As part of the research being done in Pennsylvania, the state police and other municipal police departments will adopt a new crash reporting form next month that will ask officers to check whether a driver used a hand-held or "hands free" phone.
The New York legislation allows drivers to keep using hands-free cell phones while driving.
Davis noted that the New York legislation got a major boost from Verizon Wireless, which defected from the industry position and supported the ban on hand-held cell phones.
Christy Sebastian, a Verizon spokeswoman, said last night that her company would support any state laws banning hand-held phones but feels that using hands-free cell phones is not a safety risk.
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