Cell Phones Don't Kill People

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I was listening to the radio yesterday morning, and, for awhile, the topic of the discussion was banning cell phone use while driving. Should we or shouldn't we?

I missed the beginning of the conversation, but I assume it was in response to the National Transportation Safety Board's proposal this week for a ban on cell phone use and text messaging devices while driving.

Now, before I go any farther with this, I guess I should say that there are times when I feel like a refugee from another time.

Not to say that I am old — not yet (although there are times when I feel that I need to be wearing a shirt like the one my mother had — it said, "Hill? What hill? I didn't see any hill!") — but there are definitely times when I feel that technology has gone galloping past me.

Time, I have discovered, doesn't merely fly. It sprints. You younger folks will understand that one day.

Anyway, that's how I feel about cell phones.

As I have written here before, I taught journalism on the college level in the mid–1990s. I left the classroom for several years, but I gravitated back to it last year, taking a job as an adjunct journalism professor in the local community college system.

When I did, I quickly discovered how many things had changed in the intervening years. In the '90s, for example, none of my students had cell phones. Today, they all do. It was essential to implement rules about their use in class to maintain order — and get anything done.

It's a battle I'm still fighting.

On a personal level, I resisted cell phones for many years, and I had pretty good reasons. I'm not married, and I have no children. It was an additional expense, and, in the event of an emergency on the road, I figured (at first) that I could always use a pay phone.

Well, I'm still not married, and I still have no children. Cell phones are still an additional expense, but pay phones have just about disappeared. I finally decided it might be worth the expense to be sure I would have one if something happened — but I only use it when it is absolutely necessary.

See, I've learned that anything can happen — and it can happen all by itself. It doesn't need anyone's assistance.

And I have been wary of cell phones because I have long believed that they were likely to contribute to the accident rate — which certainly doesn't need any help.

When my parents taught me to drive, the thing they emphasized, more than any other, was to keep my eyes on the road. If your attention is distracted, they told me, even for a second, it can have tragic consequences, and one must be ever vigilant — because anything can be a distraction.

A distraction can be a very modest, very momentary thing, like the sound of a dog barking or a sudden movement one catches from the corner of one's eye. But cell phone conversations can go on indefinitely, and the distraction from the task at hand can be far from modest.

The introduction of texting into the mix just raised the risk level, as far as I was concerned. It certainly raised my awareness of the risks.

Perhaps it was due, in part, to the fact that I went without a cell phone for so long, but there were certain things about them that I just never considered — and, to be fair, there were other things that just weren't factors until recently.

Like texting.

And, perhaps because my cell phone is so basic, so ordinary, I'm not entirely acclimated to a world in which the internet is at your fingertips, wherever you are. When I was in graduate school, there was no internet (well, no real commercial internet). A few years later, that was a reality. It was a new frontier, but you could only explore it from your desk at home or at work.

Then, along came laptops, and you weren't tied to a physical location anymore. But laptops are still too big and bulky for some people so access to all of it has been condensed to the "smart phone," a gadget that fits in the palm of your hand.

(Oh, what we could have done with those when I was a general assignment reporter fresh out of college!)

The speed of technological advancements has made so many things possible that my poor mind never imagined most of them — and still needs time to absorb it all.

That point was made clear to me when I heard the listeners' calls.

One observed that he frequently uses the GPS app on his cell phone when he is driving in an unfamiliar area. The cell phone is equipped to "speak" to him so it isn't necessary for him to look at the cell phone, as he would if texting. And his car is equipped for hands–free operation of the cell phone so it really is no different than speaking to a human occupant of the vehicle.

He travels a lot, he said, but he rarely has a traditional conversation on his cell phone — and almost never does so when he is behind the wheel. But, when he is using this GPS feature, which he often does because his work requires him to spend a lot of time in unfamiliar territory, "I'm still talking on my phone," he pointed out, "so, technically, I would be in violation of the law."

True — but not necessarily its spirit.

The law is intended to discourage people from talking on the phone while they're driving — which is certainly a noble objective — although, in a culture in which people can be seen trying to eat cereal, apply makeup, even get dressed behind the wheel during the daily morning rush hour, one can be forgiven for wondering if such legislation goes far enough.

Before the discussion ended, a veteran police officer came on the line. Now, most policemen with whom I have spoken about this agree that cell phone use should be curtailed while driving; they just disagree on how the law should address it.

But this particular officer wasn't too concerned about the use of cell phones behind the wheel. It's just another distraction, he said, no worse than having a conversation with someone else in the vehicle — and he went on to point out that he had many electronic distractions in his police car.

It's all a matter of being mature enough to handle it, he said.

Cell phones don't kill people.

'Sexting' the One You Love

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"Sexting (a portmanteau of sex and texting) is the act of sending sexually explicit messages or photos electronically, primarily between cell phones."

Wikipedia

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This is not an easy thing for me to say, but, in many ways, things really have changed — a lot — since I was a teenager.

Oh, sure, some things haven't changed. The good–looking guys and girls still get together, and the relatively few who know they are good–looking — and are self–confident on top of that — are, most likely, still the envy of the vast majority of their classmates.

And most teenagers, whether they are counted among the "beautiful people" or not, have access to a car in which they play their music at excessive volumes.

But most teenagers today, it seems, also have cell phones. In my day (and, boy, do I feel like my grandfather when I say those three words!), the only phone in the house was on the kitchen wall. There was no privacy. If you were going to talk to someone on the phone in my house, you had to go into our kitchen. If it was around dinner time, my mother was probably in there, putting the finishing touches on the evening meal. At any other time, you ran the risk of being overheard by someone who came in to get something from the refrigerator while you were speaking on the phone.

Some of the teenagers I knew had phones in their rooms. But they were comparatively rare. And most of them merely had extensions of the home phone line, so anyone could listen in on an extension that was somewhere else in the house. A few had a personal phone line, but not many.

I'm not sure when mobile phones were invented. They may have existed when I was a teenager. But no one I knew had one. And when I first started hearing about them, I tended to brush them off as high–tech walkie–talkies.

In recent years, though, I've come to realize the many practical uses for mobile phones.

During the massacre at Columbine High School (by the way, next Monday will be the 10th anniversary of that event), many trapped students called 911 or friends or relatives on their cell phones. So did people stuck in the upper floors of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Countless people, young and old, have summoned help with their cell phones. Countless more have used them to call for directions when they were lost — although that's a function that has become less relevant as more people get access to GPS through their cell phones.

Anyway, the point is that these phones have helped people in ways that simply weren't possible when I was a teenager.

But, as cell phones have become more prevalent, so has the potential for abuse.

"Sexting," for instance.

Rather than define that term here, I'll just direct your attention to the Wikipedia definition at the top of this post. If you click on the link to Wikipedia, you can read about the history of "sexting."

Then come back and we'll continue.

(Pausing while reader familiarizes himself/herself with "sexting.")

Now that we all know what I'm talking about when I use the word "sexting," I'll proceed.

Going back to that old–school phrase here ... in my day, a phone was a phone. It wasn't a camera. It wasn't a computer (as an aside here, we did have cameras when I was a teenager, but personal computers were still in the future). It was a phone.

But today, a mobile phone is similar to a Swiss Army knife.

(Come to think of it, that may be an alien phrase to young ears, but a Swiss Army knife was a pocket knife that was much more than merely a knife. It had all kinds of gadgets in it — a screwdriver, a can opener, a bottle opener, scissors, a fork, a knife, a spoon. A Swiss Army knife was practically a compact tool kit. More elaborate ones probably came with lug wrenches and saws. Can anyone tell me if they still make Swiss Army knives?)

Mobile phones used to be just phones, but now they come equipped with cameras, computers, all kinds of stuff. You can check your e–mail on your cell phone these days.

And it seems that the smaller they become, the more there is in them. About 15 years ago, mobile phones were big, clunky gadgets, about the size of a brick, and some were nearly as heavy. Now they're about the size of a credit card — and almost as light.

Oh, and you can also use them for plain old conversations, too — but that is so 20th century.

So, too, I suppose, is the concept of "phone sex." I first started hearing about it in the '90s, I guess, although I would imagine the potential for that has been around since phones started to become fixtures in private homes.

Anyway, when the internet was still in its infancy, apparently, some people started exchanging phone numbers for that purpose by e–mail and in chat rooms, and there seemed to be something of a boom in popularity — for awhile.

And, for awhile there, "virtual sex" was a popular topic. From what I've heard, I gather that "virtual sex" referred to role playing in chat rooms.

But its appeal seems to have tapered off in recent years. I didn't understand that before. But now I think I know why.

"Sexting."

I hadn't heard much about it until lately. And now, to hear some people talk, it's the scourge of our times.

To me, it seems like the latest example of young people doing what young people do best — being curious about each other. And part of me is inclined to say, "Leave them alone! Let them enjoy being young." Our culture sometimes seems too prone to reducing things to their most basic and unappealing elements, and I am reminded of the words of Thelma Ritter in Hitchcock's "Rear Window" — "[Y]ou can't tell the difference between a petting party and a civil service exam."

But things have changed since Ritter's day.

As Susan Reimer points out in the Baltimore Sun, these nude images can take on lives of their own in cyberspace, regardless of initial intentions.

"[U]nlike love letters that can be tossed in the fireplace when the relationship is over," writes Reimer, "nothing in cyberspace ever really gets deleted."

Lately, it's been leading to some pretty extreme laws — jail time for distributing child pornography and registry as a sex offender? It's not good behavior, but, really, do we want to give kids criminal records for things like that?

The state of Vermont apparently has been rethinking its law, and that's good. More states need to use common sense when making these laws.

Clearly, it seems to me, parents and teenagers need to have more heart–to–heart conversations. But stay away from the fear tactics. Young people figured out that approach was a bunch of hooey when their parents tried to convince them they would become criminally insane if they smoked marijuana, which was blatantly false and forever tainted the fear factor, even when it was used legitimately.

If they lied to us about that, the thinking went, what else might they lie to us about?

Well, anything involving sex is way up there on the list.

And the risks of "sexting" are scary enough. No fictional embellishment is needed.

So let's keep things in a realistic realm. The technology has changed, but the human instincts are the same. The specifics are different than they were when I was a teenager, but, in general, not much has changed.

Do we really want to get the police and the courts involved?

Should Cell Phones Be Banned on the Road?

Unless you're a stunt driver — like the ones in the 1996 film "Crash" — no one intends to be in an automobile accident.

But, more and more frequently, people who insist on talking on their cell phones while trying to operate their vehicles find themselves in accidents with other drivers, often resulting in serious injuries and sometimes causing the deaths of motorists.

That's why the National Safety Council is urging a nationwide ban on using cell phones behind the wheel.

Understandably, the cell phone industry opposes the move, and politicians are reluctant to embrace it, believing that supporting it will cost them votes.

Courage is required.

Cell phones make many things possible today. For example, parents can keep in touch with their children, even when those children are nowhere near a traditional landline phone.

That can be valuable in many ways and many situations. When young people were being slaughtered at Columbine a decade ago, there's no telling how many parents' minds were put at ease with the knowledge cell phones provided that their children were safe.

But cell phones can also be a distraction, one that can have deadly consequences in other situations.

It will be a hard law to enforce.

If someone is pulled over by a police officer and ticketed for talking on a cell phone while operating a vehicle, that person can claim to have been answering an emergency call — even if the truth is that the person overslept and is running late for work or is merely chatting with a friend.

Certain provisions need to be included in such a ban. People with more knowledge of the technology than I need to be involved in the writing of such laws.

Common sense says that there are situations in which speaking on a cell phone is necessary, even behind the wheel.

But studies have shown that drivers can be distracted from the task of driving simply by conversing with a passenger. That risk is compounded by trying to simultaneously operate a cell phone and a vehicle.

A driver has two hands and two eyes. Both should be focused on the primary job, which is to operate the vehicle.

There must be an answer that will address everyone's concerns — even if it is completely satisfactory to no one.