Ontario Bans Cell Phones Behind the Wheel But Is It Enough?

After the cut off date of October 26, 2009, Ontario drivers caught using a GPS, typing, texting, chatting, emailing or phoning using hand-held devices will be fined up to $500. Hands-free use will be allowed, according to the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. Drivers are still encouraged to use a cell phone to call 911 in emergency situations, after pulling over safely. According to the Ministry of Transport, using your cell while driving, even hands-free, can make you four times more likely to experience a collision. It also states: "Motor vehicle collisions are the greatest single cause of traumatic workplace deaths in Ontario," reason enough to change our habits. According to an RBC/ Ipsos Reid poll, 85 percent of Canadian drivers do not approve of using a cell phone while driving but a whopping 95 percent report seeing other people talking on cell phones while on the road. Despite widespread disapproval for the practice, more than half of cell phone users polled admitted to using them while driving, according to the survey. Many US states have banned cell phones behind the wheel and the Governor's Highway Safety Association, GHSA, advises all Americans to put away their cell phones, regardless of the law in their state. The GHSA also states that "there is no clear indication that hands-free use is any safer than hand held. A Virginia Tech study indicated hands-free systems may be beneficial, while studies from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the University of Utah and Carnegie Mellon have indicated all cell phone use is distracting." Diverse countries have banned cell phones behind the wheel, including Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico City, Netherlands, Norway, Islamabad, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UK and Zimbabwe. Ontario's Ministry of Transportation is following this international trend. The question is, will these regulations save the lives they are intended to spare or is multitasking too dangerous? The answer depends on whether the task at hand leads to attentional blindness. In his book, Theatre of the Mind, Jay Ingram recounts a classic experiment which demonstrates attentional blindness. Subjects were asked to watch a video of basketball players and count certain types of passes made by either the black or white team. At some point in the video, either a woman with a pink umbrella or a man in a gorilla suit crosses the hardwood, appearing for five seconds. Surprisingly, half of the test subjects, concentrating on counting passes, failed to notice the intruder. Many even asked to see the video again because they did not believe they could have missed it. The human mind 'sees' what it is attending to. Ingram's evidence for this is that participants counting passes by the basketball players in black uniforms were more likely to notice the gorilla, because they were tracking objects of a similar colour. Regardless of the explanation, statistics indicate that using a cell phone behind the wheel puts young people at great risk. An Insurance Bureau of Canada (2007) study, cited on the Transport Ministry website, found that "drivers aged 21 and under with less than six months of driving experience had more collisions, drove at higher initial speeds and followed the car ahead more closely while talking on their cell phones." Similarly, the Ministry quotes a Ford study in which: "Teen participants followed at unsafe distances, had poor vehicle control skills and were prone to distraction from hand-held phone-related tasks. In a simulator test, the rate at which adults failed to identify potentially dangerous events (such as a car quickly changing lanes in front of them) rose to 13 per cent more often, while this rate rose to 50 per cent for teens," who were driving while distracted .