NEW YORK, Feb 12 (Reuters) -- A new study might have you putting some distance between yourself and drivers busy talking on their cell phones.
"The use of cellular phones in motor vehicles is associated with a quadrupling of the risk of a collision during the brief period of a call," according to University of Toronto researchers who studied the telephone billing records of nearly 700 drivers involved in collisions.
The study is published this week in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Cell-phone usage was often linked with more potentially dangerous driving situations. "The association appeared stronger for collisions on high-speed roadways than for collisions in parking lots, at gas stations, or in other low-speed locations," they say.
And, contrary to common belief, hands-free units were just as likely to be associated with accidents as hand-held cell phones. That fact led researchers to speculate "that motor vehicle collisions result from a driver's limitations with regard to attention rather than dexterity."
The Toronto researchers say there was one advantage for car phone users. "Cellular telephones have benefits, such as allowing drivers to make emergency calls quickly." Thirty-nine percent of those drivers involved in accidents called emergency services via their cell phones, the study says.
In a comment on the study, Dr. Malcolm Maclure of Harvard's School of Public Health, and Dr. Murray Mittleman of Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center point out that the use of cell phone technology may not be the real distraction. "Simply talking while driving may be the key factor." They say a 1993 study found that "placing a call was found to be no more distracting than tuning a car radio or engaging in an intense conversation."
They point out that, using the Toronto data, between 6% and 12% of the accidents in the study could have been attributed to cell phone use. "If 1 in 10 vehicles has a telephone by the year 2000... then between 0.6% and 1.2% of all collisions may be attributable to telephone use."
The Toronto study authors say they are not necessarily advocating a ban on the devices. They acknowledge that, although cell phones may contribute to poor driving, "public debate is needed, given that cellular telephones contribute to improvements in productivity, the quality of life, and peace of mind for more than 30 million people in North America alone."
For now, cell-phone users should regulate themselves, the study suggests, by "refraining from placing or receiving unnecessary calls, interrupting telephone conversations if necessary, and keeping calls brief."
SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine (1997;336(7):453-458, 501-502)
