Cell Time- Phone or Jail by Matt Pepin

Cell Time- Phone or Jail?

The two essays in Chapter 17 argue whether cell phone use while driving should be prohibited or allowed. Both sides agree that the use of cell phones while driving cause accidents. At issue is whether the benefits outweigh the risks. I don’t think either side adequately defends or substantiates their side of the issue. Because of personal incidents involving near accidents and because I think the preponderance of convincing evidence was submitted by the Advocates for Cell Phone Safety, I support prohibiting handheld cell phones while driving.
Advocates for Cell Phone Safety base their statistics that cell phones are a problem upon a risk analysis program run by Harvard and funded by AT&T. Hard evidence is lacking because in many states police do not note whether or not a driver involved in an accident had been on the phone. If there was no evidence or eyewitness to prove or disprove if a driver had been using a phone when an accident occurred, would most drivers admit to the fact if doing so put them at fault?
The group states that 120 kids and small stature women were killed by airbags and 150 people with Firestone tires. They consider airbags and tires essential for driving and cell phones are not. They didn’t mention that the Firestone tires were defective and eventually recalled, nor did they mention the fact that air bags save far more people than they kill. I believe this detracted from their essay. Their estimate of fatalities caused by cell phones range from 450-1000 people a year, while advocates for cell phone use put yearly fatalities at about 100 per year. Both sides agree to the fact that there is very little data to base these estimates on. Proponents of prohibition state that in November of 2000, Japan became one of 14 countries that banned handheld phone use while driving. “Accidents caused by the use of mobile phones dropped 75% the next month”, said Mark Burris of the University of South Florida’s Center for Urban Transportation Research. No mention was made of how evidence for cell phone related accidents was collected to conclusively prove that the 75 percent drop in accident rate was exclusively the result of banning handheld cell phones. Fatalities in every location I checked did drop after banning handheld cell phones. One can infer from this that legislation concerning cell phones has had an effect on auto accidents.
Hahn and Tetlock’s essay advocates the use of handheld cell phone use while driving. The major thrust of their argument is the cost of not being able to conduct business on the phone, not being able to call home on the fly and the security and life saving capabilities of having a phone in case of an emergency. A driver would still have all these options by using a hands-free phone or pulling out of the flow of traffic and using their handheld phones.
One would be hard pressed to find a driver who has either been in an accident or had a close call. In a split second a casual driving experience can change into a trip of terror. Once control of a vehicle is lost it can turn into a lethal instrument to the driver and passengers or others in the path of the out of control vehicle. Talking pleasure or business with one on the steering wheel and the other on a phone is not defensive driving; it is an accident waiting to happen.