John N. Demas is a founding partner at Demas & Rosenthal, LLP in Sacramento, California. He’s a noted expert in the field of personal injury law, litigating and settling hundreds of personal injury cases over the past 20 years. Here, he explains the dangers of driving while talking on a cell phone.
There has been a huge increase in cases dealing with the topic of cell phones and car accidents in recent years. If you take a look at some of the statistics, it is just extremely dangerous to the person using the phone as well as everyone else on the road.
California is one of the few states that, thankfully, prohibits texting while driving. And now, we have the hands-free cell phone driving law as well. This is a great thing because if you look at the research that is available out there, numerous studies have shown that up to 85% of cell phone users were talking while driving. Not only that, but statistics have shown that around 6% of all auto accidents in a given year are due to a driver who was talking on his cell phone at the time.
Driving a car obviously involves a lot of decision making. We all kind of take it for granted, though, and think that we can multitask and do all sorts of things while we’re driving. But there is a lot of information that our brains are processing while we are driving and the last thing that we need are additional distractions like texting or cell phone use.
One school of thought believes there should be a ban on all cell phone use in vehicles, period. I don’t know if the various bans on cell phones will actually ever get that far, but there is a definite trend in that direction, it seems.
What I have seen and heard recently is that some of the more progressive companies are banning employees from talking on cell phones—whether it is hands free or not—while they are driving out there on the road for work. They are requiring employees to pull over and talk on the phone instead, and I think that is smart.
From the perspective of an attorney, juries do not have any sympathy for people who are distracted while they are driving. Whether it is because they were texting, on the phone, reading the newspaper, or looking for something, if this distraction causes an accident, then the jury is going to have little sympathy for the driver.
So I think that more and more companies, to avoid liability, are taking the right approach by prohibiting all its employees from talking at all on the phone while driving. I think we are going to see that happen more and more as more people begin to realize how dangerous driving while talking really is.
I should mention, though, that having a cell phone with you for safety on the road is still important. Being able to call 911 in the case of an emergency is really key and helpful in many situations for people on the road. However, there is a big difference between keeping a cell phone in your car for emergencies and using a cell phone to make frivolous phone calls on the road.
I would certainly discourage any of my clients from using a cell phone while on the road—for talking, texting, or otherwise—especially given how prevalent and controversial the topic has become in California in recent years.
