Cherisse Moe

For years, ex­perts and re­searchers have been sound­ing the alarm: Cell­phone use while dri­ving is a po­ten­tial­ly dead­ly com­bi­na­tion. De­spite fright­en­ing sta­tis­tics on the dan­gers of do­ing such–talk­ing on a mo­bile phone, tex­ting and BBM-ing (for those with the new "ME2" that is the Black­Ber­ry), have be­come as com­mon place as flood­ing in Trinidad af­ter light to heavy rain­fall. Still, how many of us are guilty of "mul­ti-task­ing?" Too many to count. Bad habits die hard, you ar­gue? Well, would pay­ing a hefty fine of $5,000 jolt you in­to ac­tion?

Very soon, that's ex­act­ly what you would have to fork out for en­gag­ing in any of the above while be­hind the wheel of a ve­hi­cle. You can't dig that deep in­to your wal­let, you say? Spend­ing two months in prison with hard labour is your oth­er op­tion. Cell­phones are a main­stay of this mod­ern era, but while they can be life-sav­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools to have ready in a ve­hi­cle in case of emer­gency, in some cas­es, its use is more of a dan­ger than a boon.

Dig­i­cel: On De Road Off De Phone

It was at a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence on Ju­ly 29 that Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er an­nounced that T&T would soon join coun­tries such as Aus­tralia, Bahrain, Rus­sia and Egypt, in ban­ning the use of mo­bile phones while dri­ving. Cab­i­net had ap­proved the pro­vi­sions to be em­bod­ied in the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle (Amend­ment) Bill 2010 to be tak­en to Par­lia­ment. The ini­tia­tive, Warn­er said, was be­ing done to re­duce the car­nage on the na­tion's roads. Giv­ing the pro­posed bill the thumbs up is Dig­i­cel's Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Man­ag­er, Pen­ny Gomez.

Gomez says the com­pa­ny's On De Road Off De Phone cam­paign was launched to ed­u­cate the pub­lic on safe dri­ving, as Dig­i­cel was "con­cerned" about the safe­ty of road users. "We had that in the pipelines even be­fore the min­istry an­nounced that the law would soon be passed," she re­veals. "We would not want any of our prod­ucts to cre­ate any dan­ger for road users." Gomez took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to is­sue a call to all cit­i­zens to jump on board. "We are invit­ing the pub­lic to take up the man­tle and do their part to not dri­ve dis­tract­ed. We will be ask­ing them to sign pledge books avail­able at re­tail stores. We want to send home the mes­sage, 'If you're on the road you're off the phone'"

Bumper stick­er says it all.

TSTT: Im­prove road safe­ty

Mean­while, Lisa Agard, Ex­ec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent Mo­bile Ser­vices, TSTT, says bmo­bile ful­ly sup­ports any ef­forts to im­prove road safe­ty. In fact she says bmo­bile has had sev­er­al pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns over the years. "We be­lieve that this de­bate would be even bet­ter served with a se­ri­ous look at not just cell phones, but at all oth­er types of dri­ver dis­trac­tions, which equal­ly put road users at risk. This might al­low leg­is­la­tors to deal with the is­sue in a holis­tic way, es­pe­cial­ly in terms of en­force­ment." Agard says in the ab­sence of "spe­cif­ic reg­u­la­tions," the tele­coms sec­tor has en­gaged in "a large mea­sure of self reg­u­la­tion" and has proac­tive­ly de­vel­oped so­lu­tions from ba­sic hands free de­vices to more so­phis­ti­cat­ed soft­ware which "reads" mes­sages to users. "bmo­bile is look­ing for­ward to see­ing this is­sue pro­gressed and will con­tin­ue to play its part in mak­ing the na­tions roads safe for all," she says.

Oprah's No Phone Zone

In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, some celebri­ties are forg­ing ahead to help make the road a safer place for dri­vers and pedes­tri­ans alike. To raise aware­ness and pre­vent dis­tract­ed dri­ving, the lead­ing la­dy in talk show his­to­ry, Oprah Win­frey, re­cent­ly launched her No Phone Zone cam­paign. The cam­paign urges mo­torists to de­sist from tex­ting or talk­ing on the phone while dri­ving. Os­car win­ners San­dra Bul­lock, Jeff Bridges and Mo'Nique, co­me­di­an Jer­ry Se­in­feld, ac­tress and icon Raquel Welch, en­ter­tain­er and en­tre­pre­neur Tyler Per­ry–are just a few of the 160,000 peo­ple who have signed Oprah's pledge at Oprah.com.

Hard Facts

Sev­er­al stud­ies show that talk­ing on a cell­phone while dri­ving can wreck as much hav­oc as dri­ving while in­tox­i­cat­ed. A 2006 US study, mean­while, re­vealed that hands-free cell­phones are just as dis­tract­ing as hand­held cell­phones be­cause the con­ver­sa­tion it­self–not just ma­nip­u­la­tion of a hand­held phone–dis­tracts dri­vers from road con­di­tions.

Stud­ies al­so re­veal:

Dri­vers take their eyes off the road for an av­er­age of 4.6 sec­onds when tex­ting–enough times to hit a pedes­tri­an, ve­hi­cle or high­way di­vider in the process.

Dri­ving while tex­ting in­creas­es your chance of crash­ing by 20 times.

Di­alling a cell­phone in­creas­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a crash by 2.8 times. Talk­ing or lis­ten­ing to a cell phone con­ver­sa­tion in­creas­es risk by 1.3 times.