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CELL PHONES AND DRIVING

Thursday, July 5, 2001




Fiddling with radio, French fries pose bigger threat

I would like to know where you got your facts about the dangers of cell-phone use in automobiles. According to a report issued this year by the University of North Carolina's Highway Safety Research Center, only 1.5 percent of traffic accidents were caused by drivers distracted by cell phones. Here is a list of the report's other findings:

* Car radios -- fiddling with a car's CD/cassette player caused 11.5 percent of all accidents, making car stereos eight times as deadly as dialing a cell phone.

* Air conditioners -- adjusting a car's climate-control system caused 2.8 percent of accidents, making that twice as dangerous as using a cell phone.

* Passengers -- having another person in the car caused 10.9 percent of collisions, making that seven times as hazardous.

* Food -- eating and drinking while driving caused 1.7 percent of accidents, making getting a Whopper and fries to go slightly more dangerous than cell phones.

It gets a little distasteful when your paper jumps on every new political cause without first understanding the facts. There are already laws on the books for reckless driving and this would be a waste of time and energy. Of course, I guess you could start by banning car radios, air conditioners and passengers because they are all more dangerous than cell phones.

If you want to put a stop to these ridiculous political agendas, you can vote Libertarian in the next election.

Michael Robertson

Seattle

Cell-phone involvement should have to be proven

I think your recent editorial position favoring a legislative ban on hand-held cell-phone use by drivers is wrong. Cell-phone use should be a violation only if there is another moving violation caused by misuse of a cell phone. The penalty could be an additional fine, if using the cell phone can be shown (i.e. observed by police) to have caused the problem the officer wants to cite: swerving from lane to lane, failing to stop at a stop sign or other reckless behavior. Cell-phone use could also be a collateral fault in an automobile accident if its use was part and parcel to the cause of the accident, not simply because it was present in the car.

Your one example of "egregious" cell-phone use -- a man who killed two people when he tried to retrieve his cell phone after it fell on the floor -- is totally off point. That dropped item could have been a can of Diet Coke or a pack of cigarettes; that accident has nothing to do with talking on a cell phone or dialing a cell phone. The accident was caused by an idiot who tried to retrieve an object he dropped. With all the "evidence" of cell phone-induced accidents you cite, surely you could have found a better example.

What I would like to know is how many of the cell-phone accident statistics used to damn cell-phone use are collected from accidents where there was a cell phone present in the car -- but whether it was in use at the time of the accident was never investigated.

I use a hand-held cell phone in my car. I use one-touch dialing and I try to dial the phone when the car is stopped at a light or stop sign. I also try to keep my conversations under a minute so that I don't get engrossed in the conversation and forget where I am -- in the car.

Cell phones used hands-free are a better safety choice, but having police stop citizens for using (vs. misusing) a cell phone is bad law.

Matt Andrews

Seattle

THIRD RUNWAY






Historical perspective leaves no alternative

Well I see you guys have the propaganda machine cranked up to full blast. First you print an opinion piece from a self-appointed expert (Sven Holm) that was so biased that I bet he lives in Normandy Park. Then another issue has a letter to the editor suggesting Paine Field as a reliever airport.

I can only conclude that by printing these two pieces, the P-I's Editorial Board is so against the third runway that it willingly distorts the truth. Either that or some of these events I am about to describe happened when you were in New Jersey getting your journalism degree at the community college.

* About 20 years ago in a series of contentious public meeting, the Snohomish County Council approved the Paine Field master plan that prohibits the airport to be used for commercial aviation.

* A few years after that there was a committee that had public meetings to find a suitable site for a reliever airport in the Puget Sound area. The answer was the same for each site suggested: not in my back yard. The Port of Seattle then fell back on the third runway.

* The third runway is not an ideal solution, as pointed out by Holm. But it will do this: It will increase takeoffs and landings in bad weather.

If the transportation problems in the Puget Sound area are not acted upon, Boeing will not be the last to say goodbye to the region.

Bill Griffith

Seattle

ALASKAN WAY VIADUCT






All quiet on the waterfront makes for enjoyable outing

Friends and I visited the Seattle waterfront Sunday and had an unusually pleasant time. It also seemed that the people around us were smiling more than usual. I am sure that the sunshine helped, but I sincerely believe that the absence of constant roar from the Alaskan Way Viaduct was the primary reason for a nice relaxing afternoon.

The cessation of the viaduct din should be a positive environmental factor to be discussed when the future of the structure is considered.

Ben Fellows

Port Townsend

HERBERT COLUMN






Navy's outrageous abuse should not go unpunished

I was appalled by the content of Bob Herbert's June 15 column "U.S. Navy treats people like trash." U.S. Navy personnel are accused of abuse, exploitation and humiliation of citizens expressing what we in America consider the right to peaceable assembly.

These people were unarmed. Yes, they were trespassing. They were arrested. The protesters knew that going in. Accordingly, they did not resist. They were not combatants. I have a hard time with the idea that prisoners need to be forced to kneel on the rocks. What is the purpose of that? At what point is national security served?

One could make a case for a search of the prisoners, but the alleged mauling of a 68-year-old grandmother and obscene comments and gestures made toward kneeling, handcuffed women is not behavior becoming Navy officers and personnel.

If U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez was tossed in the air, dropped to the ground and kicked, as alleged in Herbert's column, those responsible must be held accountable and the definition of protecting national security has itself been trespassed.

If Navy spokesman Lt. Cory Barker thinks this kind of allegation needs no further investigation, he is wearing stripes he doesn't deserve.

Gerry McFarland

USN, 1968-1972

Seattle

NUCLEAR POWER






Dangers make expanded use impossible to justify

The U.S. Department of Energy, in its haste to find a solution to an awkward and expensive problem, has declared the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump environmentally suitable, but the geology doesn't support this claim ("Things Have Changed," June 19). The writer, Brian O'Connell, seems to have waded rather selectively through technical assessments of Yucca Mountain's feasibility.

Had he researched more thoroughly, he would have learned that the area near the Yucca Mountain site is volcanically active and contains 33 known geologic faults. More than 600 seismic events of magnitude 2.5 or greater have been recorded in the past 20 years, including a 1992 earthquake that caused $1.5 million in structural damage to the DOE's own research facility at the site.

Water has already migrated 800 feet below the surface to the level of the proposed repository in less than 50 years, defying DOE predictions it would take thousands of years. There is also agreement that groundwater beneath the repository is capable of reaching the outside environment in 500 years or less. DOE siting guidelines originally required groundwater travel time to exceed 1,000 years.

Those who wish to justify expansion of nuclear power ignore these inconvenient facts. But given these very real laws, it makes no sense to continue making radioactive waste. We should turn to safer, cheaper and more reliable alternatives for our energy needs, such as energy efficiency and renewable energy sources.

Linda Gunter

Communications Director

Safe Energy Communication Council

Washington, D.C.

WILL AND CAULFIELD






Columnist can't disguise whining with fancy words

I was just wondering how many letters you've received from readers noting that George Will is at it again, whining -- this time proclaiming that J.D. Salinger's character Holden Caulfield was "a new social type which has become familiar -- the American as whiner."

Will should know better. Whiners, like Will and Holden Caulfield have been around forever. One might refer to them as "opposing points of views."

Will, though, does whine with an outstanding vocabulary, doesn't he?

Jim Mince

Seattle

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