If You're on the Cell Phone and Driving, You May as Well Be Drunk

We all know it's a bad idea to get behind the wheel of a car if you're drunk.

If you overindulge, you shouldn't even think about driving, except to say, "Hello, designated driver."

This rule is nonnegotiable because it's not just for self-preservation. We're looking out for all those other people out there who shouldn't have to pay for our willful stupidity. It's one thing when our mistake upends our lives, but it's something altogether different when the life we destroy is not our own.

Alcohol impairs our ability to think clearly and react quickly. Period.

Building on this logic, why is it that so many of us use our cell phones when we're behind the wheel? Why do we ignore the growing body of research that shows we're just as impaired as we are when we've been drinking? And by "we," I mean me, too.

Recently, I had a sobering reminder of just how much my mind is not on the road when I drive and talk on the cell phone. My normal route home from work in Cleveland requires me to veer right at an early fork in the freeway. I've traveled this route so many times that I thought it was automatic. It turns out, though, that I have to think about what I'm doing behind the wheel, which I only discovered after driving way too far without doing any thinking at all.

It was evening, and I was on my cell phone, yakking away about — well, let's just say it wasn't an emergency. Laughing about this, giggling over that. Oh, ho-ho-ho.

Never saw the road sign. Make that signs, plural. I missed the exit and then passed at least six other signs that would have warned me that I was headed in the wrong direction. Only after I ended the call did I realize I was on my way toward central Ohio instead of the west side of Cleveland in the north.

More alarming, I could not recall a single thing I'd done on the road for the past 20 miles. I could not recount how many times I'd switched lanes, how often I let someone cut in front of me, or how I'd managed to let my speed get up to 72 miles an hour.

I didn't remember a thing.

Drunken drivers who survive their crashes often say exactly that: I don't remember.

Which means that during the time that I was driving and talking, I was no better or safer than the drunken driver I insist I never will be.

Turns out I am not alone, which, oddly enough, offers little comfort. The research shows that drivers who talk on cell phones are four times more likely to have accidents than those who don't. This is the same level of risk posed by drunken drivers.

To put it another way, I offer this headline on one such study posted on the University of Utah's Web site: "DRIVERS ON CELL PHONES ARE AS BAD AS DRUNKS."

Last week, the National Safety Council called for an all-out ban on cell phone use while driving. The ban would include hands-free devices and text messaging.

If you're about to argue that talking on a cell phone is no different from talking to a passenger in your car or listening to the radio, you might want to lower your voice to a whisper because it's so embarrassing to be loud and wrong at the same time.

Researchers at the University of Utah found that our brains work differently when we're plowing ahead while talking on cell phones. We tend to look side to side when we're driving — unless we're on the phone. Then we stare straight ahead.

This strategy might work if we were all alone for miles and miles of empty road, but long, lonesome highways usually only show up in country music. Most of the time, we're sharing the lanes with all kinds of people, who increasingly are just as distracted as we are.

As for those chatty passengers next to us? They tend to be second sets of eyes on the road, which means they're actually helpful. Most wives already know this from our years of pointing at the rear window and yelling, "Turn left back there!"

My hope is that the cell phone ban will become the law of the land.

In the meantime, I'm going to work hard to mend my drunken ways.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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