Articles Posted in Distracted Driving

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In the early part of last week six people died on Portland’s streets over the course of just a few days. At one point, according to The Oregonian, “emergency personnel responded to fatal accidents in North, Southeast and Northeast Portland” in a span of just 11 hours. Going into this holiday week, the newspaper reports, “14 people have died on Portland streets (in 2019), up from 10 deaths at the same time last year.”

City officials urged drivers to slow down, and the police chief announced on Twitter that “I am directing officers to increase enforcement.” “But,” she added, “this is everyone’s responsibility.” The newspaper quotes a city transportation official offering some advice that bears repeating: drivers “need to be alert and to look out for people walking, not drive distracted, not under the influence.”

I have used this space on many previous occasions to note Portland’s efforts to reduce pedestrian and cyclist deaths. A big part of that has been Portland’s participation in the global Vision Zero program (see links below). As The Oregonian explains, Vision Zero aspires to eliminate traffic deaths by 2025 through a combination of “redesigning streets, educating the public about safety concerns and enforcing traffic laws.” As part of Vision Zero Portland has both stepped up enforcement efforts and lowered the speed limit on key streets and roads around the city.

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Sometimes it takes a tragedy to push the legal system to close a loophole. In the wake of a 2013 accident that left two little girls dead, Governor Kate Brown has done just that: signing a new law Thursday that clarifies the legal obligations of hit-and-run drivers.

“Anna and Abigail’s Law” is named in honor of 6 and 11-year old sisters from Forest Grove “who were struck as they played in a leaf pile” in 2013, according to an article in The Oregonian. It requires “drivers who suspect that they may have caused personal or property damage after a collision to report it to police.”

“Lawmakers pursued the change after the woman connected with felony hit-and-run in connection to the case… had her three-year probation overturned by the Oregon Court of Appeals,” according to the newspaper. At the time, Oregon law did not “require a driver to return to the scene of an accident if he or she learned someone was injured or killed after the fact. In granting (the) appeal the court also ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to establish without a reasonable doubt that (the driver) had reason to believe anyone was hurt after she ran over the leaf pile.”

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The Oregonian puts it bluntly in the very first sentence of a recent article: “The number of people killed on city streets and country roads in Oregon is 13 percent higher so far this year, a death toll driven upward this summer by one of the deadliest crashes in state history.”

The single crash mentioned in that last sentence was an eight-fatality incident last month in Harney County, but, as the article goes on to detail, rather than viewing that crash as a statistical outlier police are concerned because they see it as “part of a worrisome trend this year: Multiple people dying in a single incident.” In all, the state “has seen 12 more fatal crashes than last year, but the number of people killed has increased by 37.” The article (linked below) also includes a table that dramatically illustrates how both road deaths and the number of crashes producing them has changed over the last few years. The increase in both the number of crashes and the number of deaths compared to last year is striking, as is the up-and-down (yet consistently high) nature of the numbers themselves over time.

There are a variety of reasons for this. The newspaper notes that over the last three decades the number of troopers patrolling Oregon’s roads has declined in absolute terms even as the state’s population has grown. The officers who are available focus their efforts on I-5 and other major roads and highways, despite the fact that an increasing number of fatal crashes take place on smaller roads, particularly in rural areas. A state official also tells the Oregonian that “while it’s difficult to prove, distracted driving is likely leading to more deaths and serious injuries.” This is in spite of both education campaigns and recently toughened state laws against distracted driving. And, of course, there is alcohol.

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Washington’s distracted driving law, formally known as the Driving Under the Influence of Electronics (DUIE) Act has been in effect since July. Many state residents, however, may only see it really take effect this week. A six month grace period that has been part of the law’s implementation is ending, according to a recent article in The Seattle Times.

The paper reports that the grace period was not mandatory, meaning that “some law-enforcement agencies have been ticketing offenders for months… (while) others issued warnings to educate drivers about the law.”

Fines under the Washington law are somewhat lower than those in Oregon: $136 (as opposed to $260) for a first offense and $234 for a second infraction within five years (in Oregon it’s $435).

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Over the years public awareness of the seriousness of distracted driving has only grown. In the same vein, our legal system’s efforts to address the problem have matured, reflecting both changes in communications technology and a better understanding of distracted driving as a problem.

One result, as The Oregonian reports, are new changes to Oregon’s distracted driving laws, set to come into effect on October 1. At the core of the new rules are “a stricter ban on cellphone use while driving and higher fines which escalate for repeat offenders.”

As I noted back in May when HB 2597, as the law is known, was still making its way through the legislature, there are two key elements to this law: one involving definitions and the other focusing on penalties.

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A few weeks ago I wrote about efforts to design a ‘breathalyzer for distracted driving’ – an app that law enforcement officers could use to determine whether a smartphone or other electronic device had been in use in the moments surrounding an auto accident.

Now, according to a Seattle Times story republished in The Oregonian, “anti-distraction software by a tech startup called Cellepathy would automatically go into a restrictive ‘driver mode’ when a phone is within a moving vehicle.”

Technology along these lines has long been a goal of activists looking for ways to reduce or end distracted driving. The challenges are formidable. At the most basic level, how does one make a technology sufficiently sophisticated to distinguish between the driver of a vehicle and passengers (this problem sunk some early ideas, such as using a smartphone’s GPS system to tell when the car is moving)? How does one make it both simple to use and relatively difficult to fool?

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With the Oregon Senate taking up HB 2597, a bill that would significantly increase fines for distracted driving, this is a good moment to look at both the state of the law here in Oregon and at a new technology-driven effort to combat the problem.

As The Oregonian reports, the state House passed HB 2597 early this month. According to the newspaper’s legislative tracking site the Senate held its first hearings last week and the Senate Judiciary Committee has a work session on the measure scheduled this Tuesday (May 30). If enacted, the legislation would make major – and much needed – alterations to Oregon’s existing distracted driving law.

Under current law, as laid out in ORS 811.507, distracted driving is a Class C traffic violation, punishable by a fine of up to $500 (though in practice assessed fines are often much lower – usually around $160). According to The Oregonian “under HB 2597, Oregon drivers could be fined up to $2000 for using a ‘mobile electronic device’ while on the roads. Fines for a first offense could total $1000 and be erased if drivers take a state-approved distracted driving avoidance class at their own expense. Subsequent offenses, or a first offense that causes a traffic collision, would result in higher fines that could not be waived.”

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A recent article in the Salem Statesman-Journal outlined a distracted driving conviction in Keizer that was a first for Oregon. According to the newspaper “a Medford woman became the first person ever to be convicted of causing another person’s death by driving while distracted by her cell phone.”

The 50-year-old woman pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide earlier this month “and was sentenced to three years of supervised probation,” the newspaper reported. The September 2015 accident took the life of a 68-year-old man who was crossing the street when struck by the woman’s car.

The case highlighted a significant loophole in Oregon’s distracted driving statute. As the Statesman-Journal reports, a 2015 Oregon Appeals Court ruling (State v Rabanales-Ramos – 273 Or App 228 (2015)) took a narrow view of the Oregon distracted driving law (ORS 811.507), essentially creating a loophole for all forms of distracted driving other than talking on the phone or texting. Under this interpretation, for example, using an eReader such as a Nook or Kindle would have been permitted while driving.

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A new law that came into effect in California this month is likely to be closely watched here in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere around the country. The wide-ranging legislation goes “further than most states in prohibiting the use of cellphones, banning drivers from even holding mobile devices while driving,” according to the New York Times.

The newspaper describes it as a legislative attempt to get ahead of the technology curve. “The law builds on earlier legislation that prevented drivers from talking and texting but did not prohibit them from streaming video, for instance, or using apps like Facebook and Twitter,” the paper reports. It notes that “late last month a family filed a lawsuit against Apple over a 2014 accident in which a driver using FaceTime crashed into the family’s car, killing their 5-year-old daughter.”

It may seem obvious that a law designed to prevent texting would also cover the use of Skype or FaceTime, but that is no excuse for legislators failing to tighten up the language of the relevant statutes. For example, here in Oregon the law governing distracted driving, ORS 811.507 (see link below), defines a “mobile communications device” as “a text messaging device or a wireless, two-way communications device designed to receive and transmit voice or text communication.” Would that definition cover the latest generation of the iPod Touch, a device that can’t make phone calls or send text messages but can surf the internet and make video connections? In a world where wi-fi networks are rapidly spreading around cities and towns this is no longer a theoretical question.

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A newly published report from SafeKids, an organization which regular readers know I have long supported, takes many unsettling facts about teens and cars out of the realm of hearsay. The best way to prevent teen car-related deaths and injuries is to know how and why they occur in the first place. That makes this report essential reading for every Oregon parent.

The report summary begins with an uncomfortable figure: 2138… the number of teens killed in car crashes in 2014 (the most recent year for which full data is available). On the positive side, it notes that “from 1994 to 2013, the rate of teen drivers killed actually decreased by 61 percent” adding that this two decades of progress “demonstrates the effectiveness of prevention efforts by government, industry, the medical community and nonprofits in passing graduated licensing laws, engineering safer cars and raising public awareness about risky behaviors.”

The report goes on to state that “2014, however, saw the death rate begin to increase again and early estimates for 2015 suggest that may continue.” Its main prescription is more of the kind of education and public outreach that has been so effective over time. We have all heard the public information campaigns, but it still needs to be said, and repeated often: avoid distracted driving, don’t overload the car, don’t speed and, perhaps most importantly: always buckle up and never drink and drive.

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