One Text or Call Could Wreck It All

From the Iowa State Patrol comes this distracted driving campaign with April having been National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.

Webster County Crash Raises Questions about Driver's Distractions

When a car for seemingly no good reason comes across the center line and strikes another head-on, lawyers have to ask the questions about cell phone usage.

Why are officers reluctant to investigate cell phone usage by the drivers when an accident has happened?

I’ve not seen many reports where the officer discovers a cell phone being the distraction that is the leading or even a contributing cause of the driver losing control and causing an accident. I say this with confidence because I read lots of accident reports and just before this past Christmas I was involved in an accident with a driver who came across the center line and hit me. I wanted to know whether the driver had a cell phone and if he was on it. The officer seemed reluctant to even ask the other driver and didn’t demand to see his phone so he and I could investigate.

Texting While Driving - A Deadly Combination

The drivers who are texting might want to know what happens after the lawsuit is filed. The lawyers start asking a lot of questions about cell phone use and demanding records from the driver. The focus is for the cell phone records and if you don’t have them they subpoena the monthly billing statement from your cell phone carrier.

It's the Cell Phone Participant Who's not in the car accident that lives with the guilt.

You have control over what you do and can easily just hang up. Here is what people don’t think about, who are on the other end of those phone calls? If you’re talking to a driver by cell simply hang up before you help to cause a fatality.

In law what is the last clear chance doctrine?

Even thought the Iowa Supreme Court held the last clear chance doctrine was eliminated as a separate instruction with the adoption of comparative fault, a weighing of what each driver did and didn’t do must be considered in determining who was negligent. So if that lady driving and cell phoning isn’t looking at what is clearly and obviously in her view isn’t she comparatively negligent? I think so. In this instance if we’d crashed, and we didn’t, I would have asked her for her cell phone number and told her right there that had she not been distracted with her cell phone conversation there would not have been a collision. Common sense tells us you can't see what you're not looking for. You can't see when you're not looking. Another day I'm going to cover why that left arm to your head makes it reasonably likely some day you're going to crash.

Distracted Driver's boyfriend lets the beans out of the bag

This accident demonstrates the importance of a good investigation and the difficulty of proving the at-fault driver was distracted by a cell phone call that led to a collision. Here is what happened. The date is January 13, 2010 and the location is 1301 Siebenthaler Avenue in Dayton, Ohio. Sorry all you Buckeyes but I’m picking on you again. Seems lately it’s pretty easy to do. Let’s get back to the facts of this accident. An adult female is driving her car, for some reason crosses the center line and causes a head-on collision with an oncoming car. A passenger in the struck vehicle is taken to the hospital, but the driver is reported to be uninjured.

Two Million Dollar Cell Phone Call Costly to Driver

Chicago Woman Pedestrian Struck by Distracted Driver

24-7 Press Release article released October 7, 2009, the settlement for a personal injury case of $2 million. Marla Gray-Moores, who worked at Startbucks in the Loop of Chicago, was walking in the cross-walk at the time of the pedestrian crossing light when struck by the car driven by Kevin Hwang. Hwang was on westbound Randolph turning left onto southbound Clark while talking on his cell phone, and hit Gray-Moores. He said he did not see her until she had already hit the front of his car. Hwang’s ex-girlfriend was in the car and warned him of the woman but testified that he did not listen to her warning.

Gray-Moores was brought to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and then had “a fusion at L5-S1 performed by Dr. Christopher Bergin at Oak Park Hospital.” She has since moved to Wisconsin.

In court Gray-Moores was “granted leave to seek punitive damages at the time of trial and Mr. Hwang provided pertinent personal financial information for use at trial. Settlement discussions accelerated at that point and Mr. Hwang's $2,000,000 umbrella policy was tendered.”

 Are juries ready to send a message to offenders?

Recongnition of Driving to Distraction

In Washington a government meeting was held September 30, 2009 to discuss the growing issue from the last year of distracted driving specifically related to the use of electronic devices, according the a report by Ken Thomas, from Breaking News 24/7. In the two day meeting that was called the “distracted driving summit”, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was a major expert in the discussions. “LaHood said the administration would “work with Congress” to develop ways of curbing distracted driving. The meeting would solicit ideas to address the problem “similar to what went on with seat belts and (blood-alcohol limits of) 0.08 where you really educate the public, where you tell people that they have to take personal responsibility for these things.””

Here are some key statistics behind the issue:

-Driver distraction connected to almost 6,000 killed and 500,000 injured last year

-Driver distraction was involved in 16 percent of all fatal crashes in 2008

-Age 20 and younger is the largest fraction of distracted drivers

-16% of under-20 drivers involved in fatal crashes were reported to be driving distracted

-Drivers of heavy trucks when texting increase their risk of collision 23 times, according to Virginia Tech Transportation Institute

-Car and Driver magazine reported texting and driving to be more dangerous than drunken driving

 

-Text messaging has increased per month as seen in a study by CTIA-The Wireless Association (a cellular phone trade group), which reported 10 billion text messages in December 2005 to 110 billion in December 2008

 

-18 states and the District of Columbia have made texting illegal while driving (from Insurance Institute for Highway Safety)

-7 states and the District of Columbia have made talking on a handheld cell phone illegal while driving as well (from Insurance Institute for Highway Safety). To see a chart on which states have banned which electronic device usage, see: http://www.iihs.org/laws/cellphonelaws.aspx

Another speaker at these meetings was Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat from N.Y., who along with other Democrats at the meeting, “introduced legislation in July that would require states to ban texting or e-mailing while operating a moving vehicle or lose 25 percent of their annual federal highway funding.” It was said that the Obama administration has not indicated their position on this proposal.

These discussions focused on how to go about working with Congress, and set the right motions in place to change the behavior of drivers to eliminate the root of the problem: distraction. LaHood said “We need a combination of strong laws, tough enforcement and ongoing public education to make a difference” and stop this driver distraction which he calls a “menace to society”.

Can your cell phone service kill you?

Is US Cellular’s poor service to blame for the death of a Clear Lake man? Ann Poole has filed a lawsuit in Cerro Gordo County District Court alleging that on May 18th, 2008 she dialed 911 from her US Cellular cell phone after her husband, Rick Pool, went into cardiac arrest and was incorrectly routed to a call center in Cedar Rapids. She is claiming that the lost time due to the incorrect transfer contributed to the death of her husband. In cardiac arrest situations minutes can be the difference between life and death, could it in this situation have been the difference between living and dying? I'm guessing that's the issue to be decided at the trial. Can U.S. Cellular afford to have that question answered?

Should elderly people be concerned with what cell phone provider they use? I'd like to see the transcripts from depositions; they might answer a lot of questions that rural Iowans would find interesting.

They tell us one thing but is it all true? Advertising can be so misleading.