Traffic safety panel urges cellphone ban

WASHINGTON – Texting, emailing or chatting on a cellphone while driving is simply too dangerous to be allowed, federal safety investigators declared Tuesday, urging all states to impose total bans except for emergencies.

Inspired by recent deadly crashes – including one in which a teenager sent or received 11 text messages in 11 minutes before an accident – the recommendation would apply even to hands-free devices, a much stricter rule than any current state law.

The unanimous recommendation by the five-member National Transportation Safety Board would make an exception for devices deemed to aid driver safety such as GPS navigation systems.

A group representing state highway safety offices called the recommendation “a game-changer.”

“States aren’t ready to support a total ban yet, but this may start the discussion,” Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association, said.

NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman acknowledged the recommendation would be unpopular with many people and that complying would involve changing what has become ingrained behavior for many Americans.

While the NTSB doesn’t have the power to impose restrictions, its recommendations carry significant weight with federal regulators and congressional and state lawmakers. Another recommendation issued Tuesday urges states to aggressively enforce current bans on text messaging and the use of cellphones and other portable electronic devices while driving.

“We’re not here to win a popularity contest,” she said. “No email, no text, no update, no call is worth a human life.”

Currently, 35 states and the District of Columbia ban texting while driving, while nine states and D.C. bar hand-held cellphone use. Thirty states ban all cellphone use for beginning drivers. But enforcement is generally not a high priority, and no states ban the use of hands-free devices for all drivers.

A total cellphone ban would be the hardest to accept for many people.

Leila Noelliste, 26, a Chicago blogger and business owner, said being able to talk on the cellphone “when I’m running around town” is important to self-employed people like herself.

“I don’t think they should ban cellphones because I don’t think you’re really distracted when you’re talking, it’s when you’re texting,” she said. When you’re driving and talking, “your eyes are still on the road.”

NTSB investigators said they are seeing increasing texting, cellphone calls and other distracting behavior by drivers in accidents involving all kinds of transportation. It has become routine to immediately request the preservation of cellphone and texting records when an investigation is begun.

The board’s decision to include hands-free cellphone use in its recommendation is likely to prove especially controversial. No states currently ban hands-free use, although many studies show that it is often as unsafe as hand-held phone use because drivers’ minds are on their conversations rather than what’s happening on the road.

The board has previously recommended bans on texting and cellphone use by commercial truck and bus drivers and beginning drivers, but it had stopped short of calling for a ban on the use of the devices by adults behind the wheel of passenger cars.