Distracted driving not a new problem

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/09/2014 (3497 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mahmud Ali is supposed to learn his fate Monday. You’ll remember him as the guy convicted of dangerous driving causing bodily harm in a June 2012 crash that injured a pedestrian. A court ruled he was using a cellphone at the time.

Based on some of the comments on our website, it seems some readers think Ali should go to the gallows.

I won’t defend texting or using a cellphone while driving. It’s selfish, unnecessary and puts others at risk.

I also won’t presume to tell the courts their business. Ali’s actions injured an innocent man, and he should pay a price.

What I want to address is how we’ve elevated texting and talking to bogeyman status above all other forms of distracted driving, to the point some online readers say they want Ali to spend time behind bars.

The issue of distracted driving isn’t new, but in smartphones we have a new villain. If this driver had been distracted by changing a CD, adjusting the heating controls or reaching for a coffee mug, as a society we’d shrug our shoulders, hand him a ticket for careless driving and go back to accepting that “accidents happen.”

A person injured because you were changing a CD isn’t any less valuable than a person injured because you were on your phone. The end result is the same.

My argument is texting and driving isn’t the problem, it’s merely one of the many symptoms of the underlying issue: a cavalier attitude toward driving that seems to permeate our collective consciousness.

When even the smallest plane crashes, the investigation is intensive. Collisions on the road are investigated, but typically only to determine fault. Considerably less effort goes into ensuring that type of collision doesn’t happen again.

Underlying all this is that we have not learned to take driving seriously. It hasn’t been ingrained into our culture. Instead, it’s been romanticized as a right to which every person is entitled. Getting your driver’s licence is often seen as the primary goal rather than learning how to drive well.

My son just did the high school driver education program. Frankly, if it wasn’t a prerequisite of getting a licence, I wouldn’t waste the time.

The emphasis appears to be on teaching kids how to pass the test rather than teaching them how to drive. When I augmented my son’s instruction with things such as using vision properly, reacting to skids, how much brake pressure to apply in a panic stop, how to use threshold braking for better stopping power and more control in slippery situations, setting up the seat and steering wheel for maximum control, using the dead pedal for stability and how the steering wheel and pedals are controls and not supports, he said, “They never taught us any of this.”

There is validity to the notion we shouldn’t teach too much too soon. Being too aggressive in teaching skid recovery, for example, can lead to younger drivers gaining a false sense of security untempered by maturity.

Often, making small mistakes is the best way to learn humility, which is a key prerequisite of any advanced-driving student. I’m sure we’ve all been in some kind of class where there’s at least one student wearing that cocky “You can’t teach me, I know it all” look on their face.

So I don’t recommend a racing course for every 15-year-old itching to get their licence. But some of the fundamentals of driving should be part of every driver’s initiation, from proper use of vision to the degree of braking required in an emergency, coupled with graduated introduction to more advanced techniques as the student works his or her way up to a full licence.

The graduated driver’s licence system is a good first step, but the problem is the only determinant of graduating from stage to stage is a clean driving record. There’s no requirement to demonstrate any advancement in skill. A clean driving record is encouraging, but it’s far from definite. Even a blind squirrel finds the odd nut.

A set schedule for each degree of advancement, along with an expiry date on each level, would go a long way toward ensuring safer roads.

I am not confident we’ll get there, however. There seems to be no political will, or there’s political will pointing in the wrong direction. We’ll go on pretending taking pictures of cars and taking money from people makes roads safer.

If we, as a society, could start taking driving seriously, from our exams to our education to our own driving, it would do more for road safety than a million speeding tickets or a hundred jail sentences for distracted drivers using cellphones.

If we started taking driving seriously, we wouldn’t allow ourselves to be distracted in the first place.

 

Road Noise appears on the Free Press website.