distracted driving summit

You know it's dangerous, so stop doing it!

It's not just teenagers. Adults with phones to their ears are just as dangerous behind the wheel, say researchers.

RODALE NEWS, EMMUAS, PA—"R u home yet?" Typing that behind the wheel of a moving vehicle just raised your risk of getting into a potentially fatal crash by 2,300 percent (!). So said one of the many scientists, politicians, and other public officials who have convened in Washington, DC, today and tomorrow for the Department of Transportation's first ever Distracted Driving Summit.

And it's not just texting that officials are worried about. Smartphones, iPods, navigation systems, and even electronic billboards distract drivers from the relatively simple task of operating a car. Add that to the existing low-tech distractions of kids acting up in the backseat and drivers eating or drinking, reading, writing, and putting on makeup—all things people commonly do behind the wheel—and you've got a serious public health risk, said Kristin Backstrom, senior manager at the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. "Driving is a privilege and not a right," she said. "We have to think about not just our own lives and our own safety, but those of the people around us."

Here are five major takeaways from today's panels; check back tomorrow for more coverage of the summit:

#1: We all know it's wrong, but we do it anyway. The public seems fully aware of the fact that texting and fiddling with cellphones lead to seriously distracted driving. Backstrom presented findings from a AAA survey that revealed that 87 percent of people know that texting while driving is dangerous, yet 20 percent admitted to doing it anyway. Similarly, the data showed that 85 percent of people know that talking on a cellphone puts other drivers at risk, yet nearly every American driver has talked on the phone behind the wheel at least once. While statistics on accidents caused by cellphone or texting distractions (or any other distraction, for that matter) are hard to come by, research has pretty much confirmed, hands down, that they increase your risk. And texting seems to be the worst. Tom Dingus, PhD, director of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, conducted real-world driving research and found that texting leads to a twenty-threefold increase in crash risks ("That's 2,300 percent!" he said). Compare that to with a fourfold increase for talking on the phone, a better than threefold increase for putting on makeup, and almost twofold bump for eating or drinking.

#2: Hands-free devices are not a cure-all. The issue of laws banning handheld cellphones came up more than once, but many panelists felt these bans did little to correct distracted driving. For one thing, said John Lee, PhD, professor in the department of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studies have found that drivers who use handheld phones tend to be more thoughtful about when they use them—for instance, opting to talk when traffic is light—and they drive more slowly, with more space between themselves and the car in front of them. However, "hands-free devices stop drivers from being judicious about when they use those phones," he said. And as David Eby, PhD, research associate professor and head of social and behavioral analysis at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, pointed out, research has found that it's not talking on the phone that puts drivers at the greatest risk. It's actually dialing the phone number that leads to more crashes.