Cut the calls and buckle up

Two new state laws aim to make Hawaii’s roads safer for drivers and their passengers — banning use of hand-held cellphones while driving and requiring back-seat passengers to buckle up — but there’s more to the equation than mere public safety.

In the case of cellphones, the state-law consolidation of Hawaii’s existing county bans against using a hand-held phone while driving is largely procedural and money-motivated.

After all, numerous studies have concluded that the danger results from cognitive distraction that comes with talking on the phone, which has little to do with busy hands. People need to recognize that real danger and put their phones aside to concentrate on driving — period.

Honolulu’s City Council approved an ordinance in 2010 against talking on handheld cellphones while driving — hands-free talking using wireless headset devices is still allowed — and other counties followed a year later.

This new state law, then, has less to do with caution than with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) handouts: In urging passage, state Transportation Director Glenn M. Okimoto told legislators that Congress has spread $23.1 million in fiscal 2014 among states with such a law.

Only 10 states had such laws, but now Hawaii can be expected to get in line.

Still, Hawaii’s new law does go further than the county ordinances in recognizing that even hands-free phones are dangerous, forbidding drivers under 18 years old from using them. Okimoto said that is intended "to protect the novice driver while operating a motor vehicle on the road," consistent with federal policy.

State Transportation Deputy Director Jadine Urasaki noted that using a cellphone while driving puts drivers at four times the risk of an accident with injuries.

It’s the second new road law signed by Gov. Neil Abercrombie Monday that promises to be more controversial for drivers and their passengers: It requires that everyone riding in a vehicle, including those in the back seat, use a seat belt.

Okimoto pointed out that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which supports such a requirement, stresses "that seat belts are the most effective safety feature ever invented."

Indeed, NHTSA says seat belt use by all occupants stands to increase safety by as much as 45 percent.

Okimoto noted that of Hawaii’s 40 vehicle occupant deaths in 2011, 14 were not buckled up — and if they had been wearing seat belts, at least six of them might have survived.

Also, state Health Department analysis of Emergency Medical Services records show that unrestrained back-seat riders were more than three times as likely to have fatal injuries or require hospitalization compared with buckled-up back seat passengers.

Changing old habits that allowed freedom of movement is not easy — but that will need to happen, especially since the new back-seat buckle-up law has no grace period of warnings sans citations.

It is effective immediately, and each violation will cost the driver $92 per unrestrained rider.

This seat belt law also brings up the public-safety disconnect with unrestrained riding in pickup truck beds. At minimum, Hawaii legislators next session should require use of restraints on freeways and busy streets, where pickups have become popular. California, for example, allows exemption for farmer-owned vehicles used exclusively on agricultural land.

If lawmakers are truly concerned about roadway safety, they will seriously take up Senate Bill 692, largely ignored in the recent session, to forbid passengers on Oahu from riding in a pickup’s bed except in an emergency or in parades, caravans or exhibitions.