According to Kentucky State Police Commissioner Rodney Brewer, teens may be heeding warnings against texting while driving better than people his age.
“I think teenagers are getting it quicker than adults are,” said Brewer after a Frankfort press conference with AT&T, pushing a message for high-schoolers to keep the phone out of their hands until they are done driving.
“We’ve become conditioned, even before cell phones, that when the phone rings, you answer it,” Brewer told Business Lexington. “The truth of it is we’ve become so conditioned to it with traditional methodology that it’s spilled over now with cell phones, and it’s spilled over even more into text messages. If someone text-messages me, I’m supposed to answer, and I’m supposed to answer pretty quickly and then they answer me back, and all of the sudden I am engaged in this conversation.”
Texting while driving became illegal in Kentucky on July 1, 2011, and began being enforced on New Year’s Day 2012. Since then Brewer said, as of Oct. 5, 740 citations for texting while driving have been issued by agencies statewide — a low number, he said, when compared to the overall number of people looking at their phone while driving.
“It’s a very difficult statute to enforce,” Brewer said during the press conference. “It’s not the fault of the legislature or the way that it was written. Our counterparts in other states also have difficulty in enforcing that law as well. It’s not just about the enforcement of that law; it’s also about the conduct of the driver. Inside the car, the person who really has control over their actions is that driver.”
That conduct may have more bearing on what will happen in that driver’s life than just the immediate dangers of texting instead of watching the road.
“There’s really no discount and/or surcharge that specifically spells out texting and driving,” Kentucky Farm Bureau Agent Micah Campbell said, “but part of the insurance process does have to do with what we know of a person’s character.”
And that can go a far way toward setting the insurance rates for a driver.
“We are one of a few industries that can actually discriminate based on knowledge of that person’s lifestyle. If we, as an insurance professional, know they have a habit of doing dangerous things while driving, then that certainly could play into account,” he said.
As states around the nation ban texting while driving, companies with trucking fleets are encouraged to do the same, whether or not it is the law in the state they operate.
A 2008 task force of the American Trucking Association (ATA) recommended “the safe use of technologies and encourages drivers and/or motor carriers to consider a range of policies and safeguards intended to reduce, minimize and or eliminate driver distractions that may be caused by the increased use of electronic technologies (e.g., global positioning systems, cellular phones, etc.) during the operation of all types of motor vehicles.”
KSP Commissioner Brewer has seen first hand the results of drivers not paying attention in his time with the state police.
“Distracted driving continues to be the No. 1 cause of collisions that we see year after year in the commonwealth of Kentucky. We have numerous distractions inside of our vehicles, and we have for many years, but I would dare say that texting while driving is the worst of all distractions that we have seen during my tenure in the law enforcement community,“ he said.
The ATA’s task force went on to encourage those in the business of selling mobile devices to launch awareness campaigns to get the word across to motorists about the dangers. And some of those are in full swing.
“We … recognize that some people, and way too many people, are still texting while driving,” Mary Pat Regan, AT&T’s Kentucky president, said during the recent press conference with the governor. “Every one of us has seen a driver look down at their phone, pushing buttons to text, whether it’s on the freeway or on the street in any small town or big city.
“We are a wireless company, and we realize that we have a responsibility to educate our customers about the dangerous consequences about texting while driving,” she said.
In addition to the press conference with Gov. Steve Beshear, AT&T also recently held a demonstration at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Lexington with a driving simulator to showcase the dangers of texting and driving as a part of its nationwide “It Can Wait” campaign.
“Hopefully we’re making a dent in it,” said KSP’s Brewer, who himself is trying to cut out as much technology usage as he can in the car, including just talking on the phone.
“Is this just filling in the gap time? Is this just something that can wait the hour or so until I get home, until I get to the office, or is it really something I need to talk about right now?” he said about calls to his cell phone. “Sometimes it is pretty important, but I try to pare those down as best I can.”