Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Is two seconds enough time for this guy to avoid hitting the child in front of his car? Image: Fast Lane

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s signature issue has been distracted driving. He’s spent the last four years amplifying the heartbreaking voices of those who have suffered the consequences of this highly dangerous habit. The stories of the needless loss of so many people, especially children and teens, are tragic.

Clearly, it’s time to take decisive action to stop distracted driving.

But apparently it’s not clear to everyone. Automakers have only upped the distraction ante, putting touch screens in their cars with more and more features — GPS, fuel efficiency monitoring, audio and climate controls, limitless apps, and finally, social media. How did we ever live without making dinner reservations or updating our Facebook status while driving?

And how do our anti-distraction heroes at U.S. DOT respond? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is issuing a short list of voluntary guidelines they’re asking carmakers to adopt, to discourage “the introduction of excessively distracting devices in vehicles.”

Remember the good old days, when drivers' only distractions were fiddling with the radio dial and telling kids they weren't there yet? Photo: Fast Lane

In LaHood’s words, they include:

• Limiting — to 2 seconds at a time and 12 seconds total — the time drivers must take their eyes off the road to operate in-car technology;
• Disabling texting, social media, and web browsing features unless a vehicle is stopped and in park; and
• Disabling video-based calling and conferencing unless a vehicle is stopped and in park.

According to Distraction.gov, a project of U.S. DOT, the 4.6 seconds it takes to send or read a text message is long enough to drive the length of entire football field at 55 mph, and looking at your phone is like driving that football field blindfolded. “It’s extraordinarily dangerous,” the website says. But NHTSA’s two second rule still accepts the idea of drivers speeding down almost half a football field blindfolded.

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Adults aged 18–64 who said they had talked on their cell phone while driving in the past 30 days, by country. Image: CDC

If you’ve been on a U.S. street anytime in the past few years, it comes as no surprise to hear that way too many Americans are yammering away on their cell phones — or worse, OMG’ing and LOL’ing with their friends on text and email — while driving. A new report from the CDC — from their ”Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report” — shows just how bad the American habit is.

Nine-year-old Erica Forney was killed by a distracted driver while riding her bike in 2008. Photo: Distraction.gov

The CDC looked at 2011 data on distracted driving rates in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States and found that people in the U.S. are by far the worst offenders. Of all the Europeans surveyed, the Portuguese most closely mirrored our dangerous ways.

More than two-thirds (68.7 percent) of U.S. adult drivers (aged 18–64) admitted in surveys to talking on their cell phones while driving at least once in the past 30 days. Almost a third (31.2 percent) admitted to reading or sending texts or e-mails while driving at least once during that time.

Our Portuguese counterparts had the highest rates in Europe for both of these behaviors – 59.4 percent said they’d talked on the phone and 31.3 percent had texted or emailed while driving in the past 30 days. But from there, the rates in Europe plummet. In the UK, just 20.5 percent admitted to talking while driving, and only 15.1 percent of Spaniards say they text and drive.

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The NHTSA wags its finger at distracted (and drunk) pedestrians but doesn't look too deeply into deadly driver behavior. Photo: Flickr / Alejandro Monsalve

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported last December that while overall traffic fatalities in the United States dropped in 2010, pedestrian deaths rose higher – up four percent in 2010 over 2009. Yesterday, the agency released some more detailed statistics about those crashes [PDF], but the report includes scarcely any data or analysis about the underlying causes of pedestrian deaths.

The report provides a set of tables about the prevalence of pedestrian fatalities under certain conditions — different times of day, different types of weather — but the only causal factor the NHTSA discusses is drunkenness. And remarkably, the agency implies that drunk walking, which is perfectly legal, is a bigger risk factor in pedestrian deaths than drunk driving:

Of the pedestrians involved, 33 percent had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08 grams per deciliter (g/dL) or higher. Of the drivers involved in these fatal crashes, only 14 percent had a BAC of .08 g/dL or higher, less than two-fifths the rate for the pedestrians.

In the agency’s consumer advisory, released along with the new numbers, the NHTSA warns both pedestrians and drivers to avoid travel while under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

And in keeping with recent national coverage about the hazards of “distracted walking,” the advisory only mentions distraction by electronic devices in the pedestrian section, despite the fact that ending distracted driving is the signature cause of the current transportation secretary.

Certainly, it’s everyone’s responsibility to be safe, no matter what mode they take. But the stakes for pedestrians wouldn’t be so high if people weren’t driving around at high speeds in heavy cars on roads designed with little regard for the different ways people get around.

In fact, speed is the key factor — not just in pedestrian injuries and fatalities — but in discouraging walking. “The majority of crashes [resulting in] fatalities and serious injuries are related to high speed streets,” said Scott Bricker, director of America Walks. “In the National Walking Survey that America Walks did in partnership with Hunter College [PDF], we found that distracted driving and the speed of automobile driving were the two top concerns of people walking, and are what limits their walking.”

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Here’s the latest transpo bill news that has filtered through the tight little seams in the armor around the conference committee.

Rep. DeFazio reports that there's a "deal" in the works to allow road widening to go forward, free of pesky things like public comments or environmental reviews. Photo: WyEast

First of all, the House voted last night on the two motions to instruct we mentioned last week: Rep. Diane Black’s criminally bad idea to cancel out important incentives for states to enact distracted driver laws, and Rep. Steny Hoyer’s pretty reasonable request that the House just vote on the Senate bill already.

Knowing what you know of the way Congress is working these days, I bet you know which one passed and which one failed.

That’s right, Hoyer’s motion failed 172 to 225, and Rep. Black’s plan to let more people die so that teens can text passed 201-194. O democracy, you are a cruel master. The good thing is that none of this is binding, as is evidenced by the fact that the House gave its thunderous approval to a motion to wrap up work by last Friday and it’s now Wednesday and, uh, there is no wrap on this work.

Which brings us to the next two MTIs the House will consider. One is from Rep. Mark Critz (D-PA) exhorting the conference to finish work by tomorrow, since they crashed their previous deadline. That motion will be voted on… tomorrow.

And Rep. Janice Hahn (D-CA) has a motion to preserve the language in the Senate bill creating a national freight program, complete with a strategic plan and policy, including goals to reduce environmental impacts, improve state of good repair, and improve the economic efficiency of the freight network. If there’s a way to kill such a sensible motion, I’m sure the House will find it. The freight program, we hear, has been one of many points of contention in the conference.

Hahn is also sponsoring a “Dear Colleague” letter urging her fellow lawmakers to support the Cardin-Cochran language in the Senate bill, allowing for some local control of federal dollars for transportation projects that make streets safer for walking and biking. The letter is co-authored by fellow California Democrat Lois Capps.

Meanwhile, Rep. Peter DeFazio, a stalwart champion of biking and walking, says he’s seen “very specific language there that they’ve gutted enhancements.” Whether it’s called Transportation Enhancements, Additional Activities, or Transportation Alternatives, he’s referring to the pot of money that funds bike/ped projects. DeFazio told Politico there’s bad news for environmental and community protections, too:
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We’re hearing reports that a deal on the surface transportation bill is imminent. We’ll let you know when we hear more. Could it be that the Walz Motion to Instruct lit a fire under the conferees?

Photo: People Against Distracted Driving

Three more motions are about to be voted on, assuming peace doesn’t break out first. One, sponsored by Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee, would have spiked a section of the Senate bill that provides grant money to states that enact distracted driving bans. The Senate provision would reward states that enact bans on texting for all drivers and bans on all cell phone use for drivers under the age of 18. Speaking out against these bans is like coming out in favor of drunk driving. It just makes no sense. The motion calls for a study to be conducted instead.

Another MTI in the works, sponsored by Rep. Tim McKinley of West Virginia, would have instructed the conference committee to include in its final report the House provision devolving coal ash regulation to the states, so that the EPA can’t treat a hazardous substance as hazardous substance. The House will be voting on this one momentarily.

And the final motion, sponsored by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, calls on the House to take up the Senate bill.

We’ll keep you posted on news of these motions — and this supposed deal — as it breaks.

Last Thursday, Fox News commentator Chris Wallace was interrupted in the middle of a radio interview with KFTK, a St. Louis talk radio station, when one of D.C.’s finest gave him some fair and balanced treatment for driving while using a handheld cell phone — a practice banned by the District of Columbia in 2004.

Huge hat tip to Mediaite (via DCist) for the audio below.

DCist’s Ben Freed adds: “Driving while holding a phone to one’s head is, of course, inadvisable, but it’s not actually an arrest-worthy offense. Simply failing to use a hands-free device comes with a $100 fine, not a trip to the pokey.”

Other sites have confirmed that Wallace was pulled over, but not arrested. Maybe he was just protesting a massive government conspiracy bent on installing a totalitarian regime, or something.

Distracted driving has become one of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s banner issues under secretary Ray LaHood’s tenure, with agencies launching safety programs and awareness campaigns aimed at preventing the practice. Last week, LaHood stepped into new territory by recommending that cars be built to automatically disable potentially distracting electronic devices when in motion.

Ford's Sync system allows integration of many potentially distracting devices into the dashboard console. Image: U.S. DOT

The new guidelines would seem to be of special comfort to pedestrians, cyclists, and even motorcyclists who have long observed the trend of cars getting safer for their occupants but more dangerous for everyone else. “When automakers employ ‘Infotainment Systems Engineers,’ like Ford does,” says BikePortland’s Jonathan Maus, “that should raise a red flag.”

Automakers are scrambling to find newer and fancier ways for drivers to stay connected behind the wheel, ostensibly to meet consumer demand. At the most recent Consumer Electronics Expo, Mercedes-Benz debuted their in-dash system that supports some Facebook functions even while the car is in motion, in what Maus calls a “disturbing trend”:

Automakers, scared that their vehicles can’t compete with consumers’ growing adoration of smartphones and other devices, now offer all sorts of phone-like conveniences on-board. The result? More distraction, more crashes, more deaths and injuries.

The National Transportation Safety Board had already recommended a set of anti-distracted driving measures, including outlawing the use of any electronic device — hands-on or hands-free — while driving. But the new guidelines, which are voluntary and unenforceable, represent only a cautious next step in making it harder to drive distracted. Gone is the ban on hands-free devices, for example, and the new rules would only apply to built-in electronics, leading some to expect that drivers would find after-market ways to stay connected.

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"What do we want? More of the same! When do we want it? Now!" Image: Untold Entertainment

It’s sad, really. Tremendous gains in vehicle fuel efficiency have been squandered, MIT’s Christopher Knittel demonstrates in a study published in the American Economic Review. Knittel’s analysis quantifies how, while automakers have applied meaningful fuel economy innovations over the past several decades, these have produced only modest gains in miles per gallon, because at the same time the companies inflated horsepower and vehicle size. As MIT’s press release put it:

Thus if Americans today were driving cars of the same size and power that were typical in 1980, the country’s fleet of autos would have jumped from an average of about 23 miles per gallon (mpg) to roughly 37 mpg, well above the current average of around 27 mpg. Instead, Knittel says, “Most of that technological progress has gone into [compensating for] weight and horsepower.”

Based on this history, Knittel rightly concludes that market forces cannot drive the social and environmental good of fuel efficiency; he supports an increase in the gas tax. Unfortunately, he goes on to perpetuate a convenient fallacy that has provided cover for an industry looking to evade regulation and avoid responsibility:

“I find little fault with the auto manufacturers, because there has been no incentive to put technologies into overall fuel economy,” Knittel says. “Firms are going to give consumers what they want, and if gas prices are low, consumers are going to want big, fast cars.”

In response to calls for less polluting or less dangerous vehicles, the auto industry has often depicted itself as hostage to a voracious, and quite imaginative, consumer mob that stands in the way of such progress. Apparently, car buyers expend great energy dreaming up spectacular new ideas for cars, which they then conspire to demand from the industry.

NHTSA should act swiftly and decisively on the plethora of distracting technologies being built into vehicles.

The truth is, consumers rarely want a product that they don’t know exists or that doesn’t exist yet. As marketing expert James Twitchell puts it, “In reality people often do not know what they want until they learn what others are consuming. Desire is contagious, just like the flu.” It isn’t until they see others wanting a product — in the media or in real life — that consumers start to want it.

Suburbanites across America were not collectively thunderstruck in the 1980s by the realization that living the good life meant clambering up into a giant vehicle. Instead, automakers, eager to sell more high-margin products, took advantage of regulatory loopholes to push bigger and bigger vehicles. They repositioned clunky trucks as “sport utility vehicles,” transforming them into symbols of wealth, leisure, and suburban family values. In ads, they implied that SUVs were safer by virtue of their heft and hammered on the need for capacious cargo space. The effort was so successful that despite the recession and outcry over gas prices, SUVs and SUV crossovers currently account for 31 percent of U.S. auto sales.

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Earlier this week, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Mercedes-Benz USA unveiled “mbrace2,” an in-dashboard service that enables the use of Facebook, Yelp, and Google behind the wheel. The service will likely be available in all 2013 models.

Mercedes' mbrace2 system allows drivers to update their Facebook status while driving. Photo: PCWorld

Mbrace2 will be the latest entry in a growing list of built-in communications interfaces currently offered by major automakers. Ford, GM, BMW, and Kia all feature systems that allow drivers to “read” and “write” emails or text messages using voice commands, which distracted driving prevention group Focus Driven says doesn’t cut it as a safe alternative to hand-held devices. (Mercedes’ new system is operated by knob, not by voice.)

The move was almost inevitable, Facebook’s VP of Partnerships and Platform Marketing Dan Rose told Reuters:

“Now that cars have screens that are intelligent, you would expect that more and more car manufacturers will want to make those screens capable of allowing people to connect with their friends and take advantage of the social context that comes along with that,” Rose said in an interview.

“One of the core things that people do on their screens in the car is GPS navigation and the ability to see which of your friends are nearby is something we think will be really interesting for people.”

So where is the line between “really interesting” and “dangerous distraction”? After all, the announcement comes at a time when the National Transportation Safety Board has recommended a ban on the use of all portable electronic devices, GPS devices excepted, in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Additionally, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has made the anti-distracted driving campaign something of a cornerstone issue for his department. So how will Mercedes’ new feature fare in the face of multiple public awareness campaigns and regulatory efforts aimed at combating distracted driving?

To date, U.S. DOT has made no judgments regarding these in-dash communications systems. But in a move that shows at least some recognition of the system’s potential for distraction, Mercedes has programmed mbrace2 to disable certain functions while the car is in gear, like web browsing and Facebook’s News Feed and Wall features. However, drivers can still scroll through phone numbers and addresses of their friends, check event information, and update their statuses while the car is in motion. Mercifully, Mercedes’ version of Facebook will not support third-party apps like Farmville.

In the end, though, mbrace2’s limitations may end up curbing its potential to distract. In a hands-on review of the system, PCWorld pointed out that, besides the stripped-down functionality of the apps, “Websites also look less-than-stellar on the Mbrace2′s interface, so you may just want to use your phone instead — after all, you’re already parked.”

Tomorrow is the last day of 2011, folks. I wish you a Happier New Year than this one was.

We’ve spent the last couple days looking back at some of the bests and worsts of 2011. A brief recap: The hit to transit budgets was the low point of the year, with the high point being the willingness of voters to tax themselves to restore some funding. Capitol Hill’s paralysis in the face of urgent infrastructure needs was a double-edged sword, given some of the really bad proposals out there. We booed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. James Inhofe, the lawmakers that killed President’s Obama’s high-speed rail plans, the city of Dallas, and the jury that convicted Raquel Nelson of “vehicular homicide” when she wasn’t even behind the wheel of a car. And we heaped praise on Minneapolis and Charleston for making good decisions to move their cities forward sustainably.

And before we sing Auld Lang Syne and ring in 2012, we’ve got just a little more kvetching and kvelling to do, starting with:

Most Annoying Distraction From the Real Transportation Funding Problem (and Solution): It’s no secret that the Highway Trust Fund is sputtering, and it’s taken $35 billion in general fund infusions just to keep it going this far. It’s a pretty basic equation: If you’re taking in less than you’re spending out, you’re going to come up short. So you can spend less or earn more. Most experts say it’s time to raise the federal gas tax.

What's so incompatible about bikes and bridges? Photo: Flickr / WSDOT

But this year saw some other brilliant ideas emerge – like eliminating the federal gas tax altogether and leaving all transportation taxing and spending to the states. Which is a punt if I’ve ever seen one, ignoring the fiscal crises and anti-tax atmospheres most states face, not to mention the fact that slicing transportation funding up exclusively by state doesn’t make sense for building national networks.

And it takes a few days off my life every time I give column inches to the argument, which found great support among congestion enthusiasts this year, that transit shouldn’t be funded through the Highway Trust Fund, that the Fund was just fine before all these “hangers-on” started detracting from the “core programs” – I just can’t even go on.

But I think we can all agree that the Streetsie for the Most Frustrating and Illogical Proposal for Raising Infrastructure Funds goes to the scheme to eliminate biking and walking from federal funding programs. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) framed it as a safety issue – that it’s more important to fix crumbling and unsafe bridges than to build bike trails. He was ignoring the obvious fact that it would take his home state of Kentucky 66 years to repair the bridges currently listed as deficient if they used the tiny sliver of funding devoted to bike/ped projects.

The numbers don’t crunch any better for Oklahoma, yet that state’s Sen. Tom Coburn has the same idea. It’s too bad too. It’s a state with a serious infrastructure maintenance backlog and some desperately unsafe bridges. Oklahomans could benefit from some honest proposals to make their state safer, not this political quackery.

House Republican Blooper Reel: How could we wrap up 2011 without a final lap around some of the ways the House of Representatives made a mess of transportation authorization and appropriations? We started the year with some hope that all the parties were on board to pass a transportation bill in 2011, but instead we got:

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