Our phones are killing us.
The year 2020 was the deadliest year in a decade on Ohio’s roads, and many of the record-setting fatal crashes last year involved distracted driving.
But distracted driving — which often means being distracted by our cell phones while driving — did not just become a problem last year. Since 2013, Ohio has recorded more than 100,000 traffic crashes caused by distracted drivers, and those crashes caused more than 53,000 injuries, according to the Ohio Highway Patrol.
Gov. Mike DeWine is once again attempting to address this threat by adding his Hands-Free Ohio bill to his administration’s two-year budget proposal. The governor advocated for a stand-alone version of the bill last year, but it was not approved by the General Assembly.
Right now Ohio is one of just four states in which distracted driving is not a primary offense, meaning that police cannot pull over a driver they see using a phone while also behind the wheel. Instead, people who are texting while driving can only be cited for that offense if they are pulled over for something else, such as speeding or another primary traffic offense.
The governor’s provision would allow law enforcement to stop a driver if that person is writing, sending, or reading a text; watching or recording videos; taking or watching videos; using other apps; dialing their phone; or holding a phone for a call.
It’s almost impossible to believe anyone would do any of those things while driving, much less while driving on a freeway or with children in a vehicle — but people do, which is why Ohio urgently needs a law against this.
If you’re traveling at 55 mph, and you take your eyes off the road for just 5 seconds — the amount of time it takes to read or send even a short text message — you’ve traveled the length of a football field, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Board. That’s a crash waiting to happen. Fumbling with a cell phone can be just as distracting.
Updating Ohio’s laws against distracted driving should help police stop distracted drivers before tragedy strikes. But the law hopefully can do more than that. Hopefully it can contribute to a change in public perceptions about distracted driving so that one day soon it is as socially unacceptable as drinking and driving or other dangerous behavior.
Intellectually, of course, we all know that texting or otherwise using our phones while we’re behind the wheel is deadly. And yet so many people still do it. We can all do our part to accept what Governor DeWine is urging. We need to make texting and driving culturally and legally unacceptable.
First Published February 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m.
