The next time you're about to take your hand off the wheel to start dialing, you might want to think twice.
As legislation around the country tightens its grasp on cell phone use, Massachusetts is following with a proposal of its own. The Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a Jan. 24 bill that will place heavy restrictions on using a cell phone and will ban texting altogether while driving, if the State Senate passes it.
The bill would target drivers texting or speaking on the phone without the use of a hands-free device. It would charge offenders $100 the first time they are caught, $250 for the second offense and $500 for subsequent offenses. If caught, drivers under 18 would face license suspension.
Massachusetts isn't the first state to propose such a law. California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Utah, Washington and the District of Columbia already have such laws in place, while several other states allow their cities to control the issue themselves.
TUPD Captain Mark Keith said that the issue is of growing concern because it poses a hazard for anyone near the roadways.
"It's obvious why a lot of states are trying to ban cell phone use in cars," Keith said. "It's a big distraction and a hazard on the roadway for drivers and their passengers, as well as the pedestrians."
The distraction is measurable. After a 2005 study concluded that chatting drivers were to blame in 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries, researchers at the University of Utah compared driving while using a cell phone to driving drunk in a psychological study. They found that drivers distracted by a cell phone were even more impaired than those driving with a .08 blood alcohol level.
Since the majority of students at Tufts travel strictly by foot, pedestrians on campus must deal with the consequences of distracted drivers. Sophomore Rachael Brill said that she is often annoyed by cell phone-using drivers around campus.
"It bothers me when others do it because I've seen countless drivers on the phone, while I'm just a pedestrian trying to cross the street," Brill said. "They are completely oblivious; they don't see me and could hit me on my way to class."
Although the proposed law would approve the use of hands-free technology, many believe that it is the distraction of the conversation itself that poses the threat. Captain Keith said he believes the only benefit of using additional technology is that it allows both hands to be on the wheel.
"From my own perspective, the Bluetooth technology doesn't get rid of the entire distraction," Keith said. "It still takes away from concentrating on the road. However, it is better than having your hands tied up by holding your phone."
Some Tufts students see hands-free devices as added purchases that are not worth their money. Freshman Jamie Altrueter, a Massachusetts native who drives home often and doesn't think twice about answering a call while doing so, can't rationalize buying a hands-free device could cost anywhere from $80 to $200.
"I've never considered buying one," Altreuter said. "I don't think I would use it enough to justify it."
Brill said she wouldn't use Bluetooth either. "I'm not technologically advanced enough for it," she said.
Despite the benefits the proposed law might have, it has its share of critics. The bill passed in the House by a vote of 107 to 47; however, it is the first to do so in a chain of over a dozen bills restricting cell phone use.
Technically, police can already ticket chatting drivers under a "distracted driving" statute, which has raised questions as to whether the new law is actually needed. And the excessive charges that offenders would be fined by the government and their insurance companies have caused congressmen to consider their constituents.
Altreuter criticized the proposed law for simply enforcing common sense.
"It shouldn't take a law to make people pay attention to the road and put down their cell phones in sticky situations," he said.
Altreuter was also skeptical as to whether the law would catch on, since it would be difficult to implement.
"I would stop [talking on the phone] because I don't want to get a ticket, but [the law] probably wouldn't be effective," he said. "It would be hard to enforce since texting and dialing are the only dead giveaways for officers."
While talking on a cell phone can be easily observed by fellow drivers and police officers, the prevalence of texting while driving is more difficult to spot. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. conducted a survey in 2007 which showed that 37 percent of drivers between the ages of 18 and 27 routinely used text messaging while behind the wheel.
Since the bill has yet to be passed, Keith was unsure of how he and his fellow officers would go about enforcing it. But he said that Americans' tendency to talk and drive is a bad habit that will be a hard one to break.
"If the law were to be put into effect, it would take a while to catch on," Keith said. "I think that cell phone use is so prevalent in our society that it [would] take time and a lot of enforcement, in some way or another, to get that use down."
