DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION At 60 M.P.H., Office Work Is High Risk
By MATT RICHTEL October 1, 2009
JOPLIN, Mo. - Looking back, Paul Dekok wonders what he was thinking that May morning when the urgent call came in. Mr. Dekok, a manager at the Potash Corporation, learned that a 25-ton truckload of the company's additive for livestock feed had been rejected by a customer as contaminated.
Scrambling to protect his company's credibility with a big customer, he grabbed his cellphone to arrange a new shipment, cradling it between his left ear and shoulder, and with his right hand e-mailed instructions to his staff from his laptop computer - all while driving his rental car in a construction zone on a two-lane highway in North Carolina.
What did his subordinates do before the invention of the cell phone? Or if he didn't have his business then, what did front-line workers do in similar businesses? I worked a couple of minimum-wage jobs before cell phones were common, and did just fine without being able to call my boss any time something went wrong.
I don't want to share a highway with Mr. Vered. Yet I think there's a grain of truth in Mr. Hudson's protest:
While I don't think it's safe for a driver to ever text or email, or do anything that requires eyeballs, no matter what the traffic conditions are, I think that hands-free talking would be OK in light traffic. After all, if this is true:
then you certainly don't want to be negotiating an important business deal with a tough adversary while also negotiating a four-deep cloverleaf exchange in rush-hour traffic (both difficult tasks), even on a hands-free headset.
On the other hand, I don't see the grave danger of using a hands-free headset on an empty rural highway or back road to chat with a sympathetic friend (both easy tasks) who will understand if you pause or break off the conversation because you see brake lights up ahead.
Therefore I don't think there should be a statewide, much less nationwide, ban on using hands-free headsets. Instead, any such restrictions should be tailored to local traffic considerations.
But I don't mind if texting and emailing by drivers is verboten everywhere, provided such restrictions do not interfere with non-driving passengers.
Telephones were handled differently before the cellphone.
--There were payphones in a great many places. Most businesses had one or more for the use of employees and guests.
--When a manager was out he frequently called into the home office to check for messages.
--There were more secretaries. One of their duties was to keep track of where the bosses were and call around to find them if needed. The Bell System and others offered pagers for many years.
--There were more telephone operators. When an operator answered a call at a business, she would track down guests or managers if need be by calling around or using a PA system. This was one of their duties.
--Managers carried telephone Calling (credit) cards so they could make calls from other locations without the host incurring a charge.
One could argue that in the old days if a manager was out of touch for the brief while he was on the road problems could wait. The problem is that competitors, seeking a jump, made use of cellphones to make decisions quicker. The business that can make accurate decisions the quickest and get back to a customer or vendor wins out. So, once one business got a cellphone to stay in close touch, its competitors had to get one as well.
Business were structured a little differently back then and more labor intensive. Again, when one competitor streamlines to save money (by using better telephone techniques like cellphones), the others must do so as well to keep up.
The same issues applied in the early days of telephones. Should a business get keysets, extra lines, a fancy PBX? Yes, it did, to keep up.
. . .
You'd be surprised the disruptions a cell phone yakker does to traffic even on small streets. They're not paying attention, sometimes stopping dead at a green light.
You're saying that the lack of pay phones requires you to use your cell phone while driving. Nonsense. Simply pull over to the side of the road and use the cell phone. That's what I do. That's all that the state is asking you to do.
When I'm driving I let my phone ring and voicemail gets it. If it's important enough they leave a message or at least leave caller ID and I phone them back. I also mention as part of my message that I do not take calls while driving. This hasn't resulted in any lost conversations that I can recall.
I think it is curious to note that over half of the handsets for cell phones in the Bell System's Chicago service trial (1978) were in the back seat....
That was the nature of mobile phone service prior to the explosion of handheld phones. Just this morning I saw a lady fly through a stop sign because she was on the phone. Hands free is a small, very small, improvement, the real problem is distraction.
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