Cellphone Kills ?

While driving home in his new Maruti Zen one afternoon in January, Kiran Patil, 19, a Belgaum, Karnataka, student was also busy on his cellphone. A truck suddenly shot towards Kiran, collided with his car and killed the teenager.

On an evening in September last year, a Pune motorcyclist was using his cellphone when he rammed into Monica Bhat’s bicycle. Monica, an undergraduate at the city’s Fergusson College, suffered head injuries. She went into a coma and died within days.

Cellphones, marvels of technology, are used to report emergencies, locate directions, call home, message friends, do business from the beach or golf course—life without them is now difficult to imagine. But cellphones have been proven downright deadly if employed while driving a vehicle or walking down the street. The mindless mistakes that cellphone users make are many and varied. It may be as trivial as getting off the wrong floor from a lift; or as serious as fatally falling down a flight of stairs. And most common of all: people getting knocked down by all kinds of vehicles. In June 2005, Prabir Kumar De, a Kolkata make-up artist, was at a morning photo shoot near a railway track when he answered a cellphone call. As he spoke, he moved closer and closer to the tracks. He couldn’t have heard the sound of an approaching train or even its horn, for he kept on walking and talking until the train hit—and killed him on the spot.

Why the Danger?
Your sense of hearing is almost completely consumed by the phone you’re using, and your brain tends to filter out ambient sounds. Unlike a car’s radio, for instance, the phone requires a two-way conversation. So your brain has to absorb the information and work simultaneously to provide responses, making it hard for it to process information that’s not related to your phone conversation.

A cellphone-using motorist is also likely to look at but not see a vehicle, or a pedestrian, crossing his path. He may hear but not pay attention to a horn, or the sound of another vehicle, as he would if he were just driving. By the time he becomes aware, it may be a split-second too late. Likewise, a cellphone-using pedestrian, too, exposes himself to the dangers around him.

In a report on the safety implications of “using mobiles while mobile,” the Delhi-based Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) analyzes the many skills required by a motorist: Watching the road, checking the rear- and side-view mirrors, and keeping an eye on dashboard gauges are some tasks that require visual and cognitive skills. Sharp auditory senses are also required to listen for other vehicles, horns, policemen’s whistles, emergency-sirens, and other sounds that may require the driver to alter his course. Steering the vehicle, controlling the pedals, signaling turns or switching on appropriate indicators call for biomechanical skills.

When a driver uses a mobile phone, he has to use a similar set of skills: locating the correct buttons to push, or reading the screen, would mean taking his eyes off the road. To listen for ring tones or hold a conversation, he may be too distracted to hear other cars honking or a policeman’s whistle. The skills required for safe driving become drastically impaired. “Driving and use of a mobile phone simultaneously is potentially a strong lethal combination,” says the CRRI report.

What the Experts Found
Although no statistics are available on this, today more Indian drivers and pedestrians than ever before are seen talking on cellphones.

Studies from all over the world repeatedly point to such dangers. One of them, at America’s University of Utah, used extensive simulations.

“We found that people are as impaired when they drive and talk on a cellphone as they are when they drive intoxicated...” said the study’s co-author Frank Drews, an assistant professor of psychology.

The study also found that motorists who talked on a cellphone—be it handheld or hands-free—drove slightly slower, were nine percent slower to hit the brakes, were 19 percent slower to resume normal speed after braking, and were more likely to crash. In fact three cellphone-using participants “driving” the simulator collided into cars they were trailing. And they were not drunk.

According to the UK’s Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents, talking on a phone makes drivers four times more likely to have an accident. Canadian and Australian studies, too, point to the same increase in risk, even if a hands-free mobile is used.

Many motorists believe that a hands-free cellphone is safe. That isn’t true, as yet another study by Sweden’s National Road Administration (SNRA) proved. They tested 48 people in driving simulators. Half of them had hand-held mobiles, while the other half had hands-free instruments. Both groups when compared showed almost no differences in their slowed-down reaction times. “It is the distraction of the phone conversation that is the problem,” said Ingemar Skogö, SNRA’s director-general.

The Law Should Be Tougher
While Indian laws forbid drivers of any motor vehicle from using a cellphone, the penalty for violation in most places is a mere Rs100. “Clearly that’s no deterrent,” admits Satish Mathur, Mumbai’s former joint commissioner of traffic police. And even Delhi’s Rs1500 fine is nothing compared to Norway’s $600 or Ireland’s $350. Besides paying heavy fines, drivers in the UK or Germany also risk losing their car insurance covers if they cause an accident as a result of cellphone use.

In India, on the other hand, drivers who break this law are seldom punished or even caught. When involved in an accident, they often deny that they’d used a cellphone, although cellphones record all talk-times. Says Rohit Baluja, president of the Delhi-based Institute of Road Traffic Education: “Careful investigation can reveal the reason for a crash, right from whether the driver jumped a red light or was on a cellphone. But such levels of investigation are seldom done here.”

However, Mumbai’s traffic police recently decided to get tough. Realizing that cellphone use among motorists was getting out of hand, they started regularly booking such drivers under existing laws for rash driving, which carry higher fines and a jail sentence. On October 6, every city newspaper carried front-page reports about a few offending motorists who were jailed for a day, fined up to Rs1500 and their licences suspended for six months. That sent a hard message across—and it soon became difficult to find anybody using a cellphone at the wheel.

More towns ought to follow the Mumbai example if our roads are to become safer. Safety First!

Even if the law is ineffective and the traffic police aren’t booking offenders in your town, it’s up to you to drive safely. As Satish Mathur says, “It’s best to educate people. Those who use cellphones while driving have to be made aware of the fact that they are exposing themselves and others to jeopardy.”

Promote safety by following these five rules:

Pull over.
Never use a cellphone while driving, or while crossing or walking along a road. Always stop your vehicle carefully before you answer the phone. If you’re a pedestrian, stop at a safe place to answer a call or respond to an SMS. In 2004, medical student Vahed Lokhandwalla, 23, of Mumbai was keying in an SMS message on the road when he walked into the open back door of a parked SUV. He hurt his head and bled badly.

Let it ring.
If you’re on a busy road where you can’t stop, and your phone rings, it is best to miss that call.

Remember, people coped perfectly well before cellphones arrived a few years ago. Use voicemail. If you get calls constantly, ask your service provider to activate voicemail—which will say that you’ll return the call later.

Get passenger help.
If you have a passenger, place the phone where he or she can answer it for you.

Stop the driver.
Whether you are in a taxi, bus, your own car or a friend’s, you must stop any driver from speaking on the phone while driving.

Consider what happened to a group of 26 people from Naraingarh village, Haryana, travelling in a mini-bus to Nahan, Himachal Pradesh, July 11,2008. They were speeding along the highway when driver Sandeep Kumar began talking on his cellphone. Although passengers seated near him asked him to concentrate on his driving, Kumar paid no attention. He lost control and slammed the vehicle into a tree, killing eleven. Kumar and some others were seriously injured.

That needn’t have happened had the passengers been absolutely firm.

So Be aware and educate them by spreading the message to all the friends,relatives.... to avoid cell phone while driving,Walking on pedestrians......etc

"Prevention is Better than Cure"