National Conference of State Legislatures interview

Matt Sundeen
Program Principal, Transportation
National Conference of State Legislatures
7700 East First Place
Denver, CO 80230
Phone: (303) 364-7700, ext. 1539
Fax: (303) 364-7800
matt.sundeen@ncsl.org

interviewed August 29, 2007 by Whitney Coleman

NCSL is…
50 state legislatures, bipartisan organization, come at it as neutrals, provide info to members about issues states are working on. He works in transportation program.

Cell phones while driving
In the last five to 10 years it’s really grown as an issue. 10 to15 years ago very few people had cell phones, the phones they had were shoebox size devices that didn’t do much. We didn’t have much legislation on this topic. In the last five to 60 years we’ve seen a real growth in the technology available to people and corresponding legislation relating to that.

Currency of data?
I wrote the report to summarize activity through the last year. A lot has happened this year. Washington state passed prohibition on handheld phone while driving and specifically on texting while driving. Nine states passed new laws this year: Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Nebraska, Tennessee, Texas, (related to TV in car), Virginia, Washington and West Virginia. Seven were specific to cell phones and two to general driver distractions.

Oklahoma
We’ve seen the data from Oklahoma. Senator Johnson presented a bill which would have prohibited cell phones while driving. I’d assume it’s dead now.

What inspires legislation?
A lot of the legislation that’s been proposed has a connector. There’s usually a reason why legislators are proposing bills. Certainly we see more phone calls here after an incident. Clearly phones are now part of the driving environment. It’s pretty common to see someone with their phone on their ear. If that person sees poor driving, they react accordingly. Legislatures are people too. They react to seeing that as they drive. We’re starting to see more studies come out also.

What is the reluctance to address cell phones?
There’s reasons why legislation might fail. Some of the thought is that there’s not really a consensus on the issue yet. It’s not like drunk driving or seatbelts where there was a consensus on the tropic. We don’t have a lot of statistical data, not all states are collecting data. At the same time, cell phones are not like drunk drivers. A lot of people find value to having a cell phone in their car. Certain legislators even use cell phones while driving.

“They are reluctant to take away what’s valuable to people when they don’t have data to support it yet. I think everyone agrees that it’s distracting, but do they agree that it’s distracting enough to warrant legislation?”

Future of issue
Clearly it’s an issue that’s here to stay. We’re just seeing a tremendous growth in the amount of technology that’s going into the car. Where now you have phones, the iphone that allows you to surf the web freely. It’s something that’s expanding into the driving environment. As that expands, you will see more legislators react to it. It’s difficult to predict how many states will pass laws prohibiting use of cell phones, but certainly we will see a lot of legislation considered over the next couple of years.

Bus drivers' cell phone use targeted

Interesting angle. The National Transportation Safety Board targeted bus drivers' use of cell phones while driving following a 2004 crash in which the driver was using a hands-free device. Eleven students were injured.

Interesting because it wants to ban even hands-free devices because they are still a distraction to the driver.

Full Story, Tulsa World

A break down of Cell phone laws by States

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Highway Loss Data Institute

Blog Posts: Do's and Dont's

Here are some quick tips on writing for blogs. Click here for more details.

1. Make your opinion known
2. Link like crazy
3. Write less
4. 250 Words is enough
5. Make Headlines snappy
6. Write with passion
7. Include Bullet point lists
8. Edit your post
9. Make your posts easy to scan
10. Be consistent with your style
11. Litter the post with keywords

My own tip is this:

Leave

a

lot

of

white space.

That was obviously an exaggeration, but think visually. Blogs are like newspapers in one aspect: you don't want long passeages of unbroken text in a newspaper. People won't read it.

States that ban cell phones

In the U.S., hand-held phones are banned in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, as well as Chicago, Detroit and Washington D.C.

Hand-held cellphones cannot be used while driving in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the Philippines, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Britain.

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine said the risk of an accident for people who drive while talking on a phone is the same as driving with a .08 blood alcohol level.

Source: The Gazette (Montreal), July 6, 2007

Cell-phone-related crashes soaring

This is a really good, recent story with great, Oklahoma-related statistics.

Shows that the number of traffic collisions caused by cell-phone use climbed by 31 percent in 2005 alone and has jumped from 88 collisions per year in 2000 to 775 in 2005.

Addresses "failure of state lawmakers." Follow the "story" link.

Article Here

More Info about Wesselhoft

State Lawmaker: Hang up and drive!

July 31, 2007

OKLAHOMA CITY – An Oklahoma lawmaker wants to fine and jail motorists who get into traffic accidents because they are distracted by their cell phones.

A proposal by state Rep. Paul Wesselhoft, R-Moore, would require a mandatory fine of $1,000 and 20 days in jail if cell phone use is a factor in an accident.

...

He said at least three states have banned cell phone use by motorists and four more have required that motorists use hands-free devices .

State law already requires motorists to devote “100 percent of their time to driving” but it is not being enforced, the lawmaker said.

...

Wesselhoft pointed to a recent fatal accident in New York where a 17-year-old driver slammed head-on to a truck, killing her and four other recent high school graduates. The driver was text-messaging friends at the time of the accident.

He cited a study National Highway Traffic Administration study showing drivers looked at the road less just 40 percent of the time while dialing manually.

If the bill passes the public will be amazed to see how many accidents can be attributed to cell phone use, he said.

Wesselhoft said Oklahoma Highway Safety Office figures showing cell phones were a contributing factor in 802 accidents in 2006, 775 in 2005 and 567 in 2004.
Full Story from the Joplin Globe (MO)

Cell Phone Crash Statistics

For Oklahoma, the agency that has the cell phone crash statistics is the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office.

I spoke with a woman there who gave me the link to the statistics for 2006.

However, she said, these numbers don't mean that the crash was caused by cell phones, but only that the driver was on the cell phone during that time.

She said the OHSO was the only agency in the state that had statistics on cell phone accidents.

Recent Developments on Cell Phones and Driving

Recent Studies about cell-phone use while driving have looked at various different problems. Some have looked at its prevalence as the leading cause of driver distraction. Other studies focus on the risks and differences of using hand-held versus hands-free devices.

Here is some of what I found on www.iii.org/media/hotttopics/insurance/cellphones:

The most recent survey of dangerous driver behavior was released in January 2007 by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. The survey of 1,200 drivers found that 73 percent talk on cell phones while driving. Cell phone use was highest among young drivers.

Text messaging, or “texting” by teens, a driving distraction related to cell phone use, was the subject of an August 2006 Teens Today survey conducted by the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety and Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD). The survey showed that teens considered sending text messages via cell phones to be their biggest distraction. Of the teens surveyed, 37 percent said that text messaging was extremely or very distracting, while 20 percent said that they were distracted by their emotional states and 19 percent said that having friends in the car was distracting. The January 2007 survey by the insurer Nationwide found that 19 percent of motorists say they text message while driving.

In July 2007 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Center for Statistics and Analysis released the results of their National Occupant Protection Use Survey (NOPUS), which found that in 2006, 5 percent of drivers used hand-held cell phones, down from 6 percent in 2005, the first decline since the survey began tracking hand-held cell phone use in 2000. The decline in use occurred in a number of driver categories, including female drivers (down from 8 to 6 percent), drivers in the Midwest (down from 8 to 4 percent), drivers age 25 to 69 (down from 6 to 4 percent), drivers of passenger cars (down from 6 to 4 percent) to name but a few. NOPUS is a probability-based observational survey. Data on driver cell-phone use were collected at random stop signs or stoplights only while vehicles were stopped and only during daylight hours.

Device to detect cell phones while driving

Statistics show that driving while talking on the cell phone increases the chance of an accident by 400 %. Though speaking on the cell phone while driving is not a crime in many states as of yet taking into consideration the statistics it will eventually be banned in all the states. A new company Highway and Safety control is releasing a device to automatically detect drivers talking on their cell phones. Instead of police officer needing to observe a cellphone in use, the system automatically detects a cell phone call and records which car was making the call. Already in use in a few European countries the system will make it to the US this fall it is designed to detect, identify and cite drivers who break cell phone us laws." . The company attaches a paint gun to mark the car, or even an EMP gun that can disable the offending cell phone.

LIst of Countries w/ Cell-phone Driving Ban

Click here to see a list of countries banning the use of cell phones when driving. If you scroll down the page, you'll see a comparable list for each of the U.S. states.

National Conference of State Legislatures

This source is amazing and has done a lot of the research work for us. This is the link for the site:
http://www.ncsl.org/print/transportation/2006cellphone.pdf

I think something like OU enterprise news service sounds more official than if we used "project"

Interview Intro

Here's one possible script. Feel free to suggest others.

"I’m Warren Vieth, a reporter for the OU In-Depth Journalism Project (or whatever we decide to call ourselves). I’m working on a story about the role of cell phones in vehicle accidents in Oklahoma. I’d like to interview you about this subject for a story we expect to publish within the next month or so."

(If the interview proceeds, make it clear at some point in the conversation that you might quote him or her in the story.)

WV

Who Are We?

It might be helpful for us to create an identity that accurately describes what we're doing, but sounds more credible than "I'm a student journalist working on a class project...."

It worked really well when students in statehouse reporting class identified themselves as reporters for the OU State Capital News Service.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Here are a few possibilities:

OU In-Depth Journalism Project

OU Investigative Reporting Project

OU Enterprise News Service

WV

Week 2 Project Assignments

Do these look right to everyone?

Hailey Branson: Tulsa World clip search.
Whitney Coleman: National Conference of State Legislatures.
Tiara Etheridge: Lexis/Nexis clip search. JStores search. Rep. Paul Wesselhoft
Boris Georgievski: 1997 Cell Phone Crash Study authors.
Mary Gray: State agencies.
Baxter Holmes: Federal agencies.
Crystal Mason: Oklahoman clip search.
Neeley Morrell: AAA.
Madeleine Peake: Google search.
Will Prescott: Oklahoma Press Association clip search. Class Wiki.
Jilane Rodgers: Class Blog.
Calvin Son: Oklahoma House & Senate Press Offices.
Tiffany Stockton: CTIA-The Wireless Association.
Gazmend Syla: ProfNet.
Ashley White: Dawniel Stewart.
Warren Vieth: Factiva clip search.

Should Drivers Be Banned From Using Cell Phones?

POSTED: 4:03 pm CST February 6, 2007

OKLAHOMA CITY -- A bill has been introduced in the Oklahoma Legislature that could forbid drivers from using cell phones.

Investigators said distracted driving associated with cell phone usage led to about 800 crashes in 2005, officials said."The public, I think, ultimately will appreciate a safer environment on the roads," said state Sen. Constance Johnson, who filed the bill.

Johnson's bill would allow drivers to use a hands-free phone, and it would make exceptions for emergencies.

Source: KOCO.com

Oklahoma Law Regarding Recording Conversations

Okla. Stat. tit. 13, § 176.4: Anyone who is a party to a wire, oral or electronic communication or who has obtained consent from a party can lawfully record or disclose the contents of that communication, so long as he does not do so in furtherance of a criminal act.

Under the statute, consent is not required for the taping of a non-electronic communication uttered by a person who does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in that communication. See definition of "oral communication," Okla Stat. tit. 13, § 176.2.

Unlawful recording or disclosure is a felony punishable by a fine of not less than $5,000 and jail time not to exceed five years. Okla. Stat. tit. 13, § 176.3.

Oklahoma law also makes it a misdemeanor to secretly loiter about a building with intent to hear discourse therein and repeat or publish it. Okla. Stat. tit. 21, § 1202.

Source: The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
See also: Laws regarding all states

Here We Go

Fellow Investi-Bloggers:
We're up and running, thanks to Jilane.
Please climb aboard and join the discussion.
Warren

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