THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 19, 1996 TAG: 9603190255
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BEN DOBBIN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
Aaarrrggh! I'm going to have to hang up, boss. I've just run into the back of a truck.
People with a cellular phone in the car run a 34 percent higher risk of having an accident, researchers said Monday. The danger mounts when they use the phone a lot or while doing something else, such as lighting a cigarette or drinking coffee.
Most often, it seems, motorists engrossed in a phone conversation run red lights and get into collisions at busy intersections. But even on the open highway, a car-phone call can take people's minds off their driving.
``They kind of forget about the rest of the world,'' said John Violanti, a criminal justice professor at Rochester Institute of Technology. ``They're not intentionally cutting somebody off, they're just not seeing them.''
The study, which is believed to be the first of its kind, appears in the March issue of Accident Analysis and Prevention, a British journal.
The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association dismissed it as limited and flawed.
``It has glaring research shortcomings,'' spokeswoman Pam Small said.
The researchers, who plan a larger survey this year, countered that their findings, even though preliminary, should not be ignored at a time when cell-phone sales are booming.
Violanti and James Marshall, a professor of social and preventive medicine at the State University of New York at Buffalo, randomly selected 100 New York motorists who had been in an accident and 100 who had not.
Of those in accidents, 13.7 percent owned a cellular phone, while 10.6 percent of the accident-free drivers had a phone in the car.
Through surveys and phone records, the researchers determined that the motorists who used car phones more often than the average - 50 minutes a month - were five times more likely to have an accident than those who either talked less or didn't own a car phone.
``We suspect, and it's only a suspicion, that intense business calls are more likely than personal conversations to divert attention from driving and may increase the risk of accidents,'' said Violanti, a former state trooper.
``If you need to make an intense business call, it would be my advice to pull over in a safe place, maybe a rest area. I think people don't want to do that. They want to save time.''
``Driver inattention'' was listed as a factor in about 35 percent of the 700,000 traffic accidents reported in New York in 1993, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles.
The study indicates that a cell phone is a driver's biggest distraction, Violanti said. But the risk of an accident increases twofold when a car phone is used while drinking a beverage or lighting up and threefold when the driver takes both hands off the steering wheel, the study found.
About one in 10 motorists in the United States owns a car phone, and the number is growing rapidly. About 30 million people use cell phones, and about 28,000 subscribers a day sign up nationwide for cell-phone service.
People can choose between portable, hand-held devices, mobile phones mounted permanently in a car or units that can be removed a short distance from a car. Many have safety features for the road, such as hands-free answering.
They also come in handy when there's been an accident.
KEYWORDS: CELLULAR PHONE CAR ACCIDENT STUDY REPORT by CNB