Driving 'high' on cell phones

The news is sobering. Driving while talking on a cell phone is the same as driving drunk. Motorists who use a cell phone are just as distracted, slow to react and as easily confused as motorists tipsy from drinking. And a drunk driver using a cell phone is more dangerous than a runaway train.

The implication is clear. No more "one last call for the road" for America's habitual phoners.

The parallel emerged between the two phenomena in a study published by University of Utah professors in the journal "Human Factors." In the study, 40 participants each drove a simulator while intoxicated, then while talking on a cell phone. A control group drove undistracted. The cell phone drivers drove more slowly, were slower to hit the brakes, didn't keep a consistent following distance and were more likely to crash than drivers who were not distracted.

The concern is that, like alcoholics, chronic cell phone users are in denial. They don't believe their "habit" has a negative effect, mostly because it doesn't feel that way. Once a person is off the phone, the cell phone driver immediately "sobers up" and returns to normal alertness and reaction times. It's those few minutes when that phone is off the hook, or even being voice activated, that is the killer — quite literally.

As with other safety hazards, society must now go down that "long road" again — the long road of education, enforcement, altering laws and bringing peer pressure to bear until cell phone use on the highway becomes as socially unacceptable as tossing a bag full of litter from the window.

The upside is the process has been done successfully with other driving concerns. Not that long ago, for instance, having an unrestrained child in a car was still considered a legitimate option. That has changed. And with diligence and hard work, a cell phone in the driver's seat will be reined in as well.

For now, we urge drivers to be "doubly defensive" when they spot a cell phone user cruising along near them.

And we urge the "cell phonoholics" themselves to never drive with an "open cell phone" in the car.