I've changed my mind. I no longer think there is anything OK about talking on a cell phone when driving.
My attitude in the past has been cavalier on the subject. I have been guilty of the act countless times. I concluded that I was an experienced driver and justified my actions by citing my busy schedule as an excuse for my frequent conversations in transit.
To be certain, I have been behind my share of inattentive drivers who were too busy chatting it up to notice that the light had turned green. I've watched with only mild irritation as some freeway driver, deeply engaged in conversation, slowed unwittingly to a speed dangerously below the speed limit.
And I have seen one too many drivers make unsignaled lane changes because they had cell phones glued to their ears.
But I would never do any of those things, and to be honest, I enjoyed the convenience of being able to handle two things at one time.
Probably like you, I could not find it in me to be moved by statistics. I knew the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had just completed a comprehensive study that unequivocally determined that a driver's risk of getting into an accident was three times higher when the driver is on a cell phone, hands free or not. To me, that was merely another dry, banal fact. March 24, 2005: Dameatrius McCreary, a sunny 5-year-old from Oregon, skipped off the school bus ready to share an afternoon with his beloved grandmother, Colleen Gamble. As Dameatrius stepped out in front of the bus, he was run over and killed by Angelique Dipman. Angelique was engrossed in a conversation on her cell phone.
Hearing that the risk of a collision increased dramatically if drivers on cell phones were young and inexperienced only made me feel relieved that I was neither young nor inexperienced.
June 24, 2006: Dartagnan Rowe never had a chance. He was killed two weeks before he was born by 16-year-old Alexander Manocchio, who was reaching for a ringing cell phone while he was driving. In those precious few seconds that Manocchio took his concentration off the road, he managed to slam his 2002 Ford Explorer head-on into Karyn Cordell's 1998 Chevrolet Cavalier. A week ago Sunday, there was to be a baby shower for Karyn. Instead, the family of Karyn and Dartagnan spent that Sunday burying them both.
People talking on cell phones cause 6 percent of the accidents in the U.S. each year -- killing more than 2,600 people and injuring more than 330,000. That all sounds like not much more than a mumble jumble of numbers to me. July 25, 2002: 17-year-old twins Kimberly and Kathy Seager were in a car with their brother and a friend when they came to a stop at a railroad crossing.
As they waited for the train to pass, 23-year-old Joel Hostetler smashed into their vehicle, having never touched his brakes. Joel had been distracted by a conversation he was having on his cell phone.
Their bones crushed and their bodies devastated by internal injuries, the two teenagers clung to life for four tortured days. But tubes and respirators could not keep the two beautiful young girls who had come into this world within minutes of each other from dying. They were pronounced dead on the same day at exactly the same time.
I no longer talk on my cell phone while I am driving. I am only sorry that it took the loss of Dameatrius, Dartagnan, Karyn, Kimberly and Kathy for me to be able to finally discern the difference between right and wrong.
Michelle Groh-Gordy is the owner of InterActive! Traffic School Online atwww.trafficinteractive.com , and writes a syndicated weekly column on driving for the publications of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group.
