Omahans take on distracted drivers

FocusDriven, whose creation was announced Tuesday in Washington, hopes to marshal public disapproval and legislation against distracted driving just as Mothers Against Drunk Driving has against intoxicated motorists for the past 30 years.

“It's past the time of discussion. Action needs to be taken,” said Rob Reynolds of Omaha, a founder of the new group whose 16-year-old daughter died in a 2007 crash with another teen driver.

The group faces an uphill drive: Cell phone use while driving has become widespread, and ever-more-exotic electronic devices are constantly appearing to beckon a driver's attention away from the road.

Lawmakers — in Congress and both the Nebraska and Iowa Legislatures — say they want to crack down but don't agree on how far they should go. So far, 19 states have banned texting while driving, and Iowa and Nebraska seem poised to join them. Some states further restrict phone use by drivers, but no state has completely banned it.

For Rob and Shari Reynolds, both 44, lifelong Omahans who met while working at a Perkins restaurant, the new group is an extension of an effort begun soon after their daughter was killed in May 2007, just after her sophomore year at Marian High School.

“From the moment that Cady died, we knew we wanted to be part of this message,” Shari Reynolds said Tuesday. For one thing, she said, they have four other children to turn into responsible drivers, the eldest of which, Emily, got a license just last March after turning 16.

“And it's for all of us. ... It could have been me in that car that night,” the mother said.

Distracted driving is “a big problem getting worse” because handheld devices are proliferating alongside a misplaced sense of entitlement to use them anywhere, she said.

“People are making choices,” she said. “The choice to drink and drive is stupid, and we've known that for years. Phoning while driving is just as stupid.”

Using their late daughter's initials, the couple launched their own nonprofit group, C.A.R. Alliance for Safer Teen Driving, soon after the fatal wreck, aimed at warning young drivers against phoning while behind the wheel. Rob Reynolds said that effort led to a meeting last year with an official of the National Safety Council and with four other families that have lost loved ones in similar crashes.

In turn, the council and the U.S. Transportation Department helped the families set up FocusDriven.

“I'm on a rampage about distracted driving,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said earlier this week. “I'm not going to give up on it. I'm going to do everything I can to try to make sure people drive safely — without cell phones, without Bluetooth, without Blackberries.”

Reynolds said the new group would speak for a growing number of bereaved who must be heard.

“There's a lot of people like this who've been waiting for a national voice,” he said, adding that the group will not only lobby but also provide support to victims and their families.

The target, he said, “is not just texting” but all phone use while driving. If people are unwilling to accept the mounting number of studies implicating not just the holding of a phone but the distraction posed by phone conversation, he said, then they should ask themselves: If you were in an accident, would you want the other driver to know you were on the phone?

“I think the nation is starting to wake up out of its stupor,” Reynolds said, likening awareness of distracted driving to that of drunken driving about 20 years ago.

People now expect to be tested for alcohol after a crash; soon they'll expect similar scrutiny of their phone use, he predicted.

Legislators should lead the way, he said, and would be quickly moved to act if they had to plan a funeral for a teenager or watch the rest of her class graduate from high school without her.

So far the legislative response has been mixed and hesitant:

Ÿ In Washington, several bills were introduced last year to entice or compel states to ban texting while driving. None has yet emerged from committee. The only move toward a broader phone ban has been LaHood's jawboning campaign.

Ÿ In Nebraska, State Sen. John Harms of Scottsbluff has pledged to introduce a bill in this session to widen the state's texting-while-driving ban from teens to all drivers. It will pass easily, he predicted Tuesday, but further phone restrictions have little chance.

Ÿ In Iowa, Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Tom Rielly, a Democrat from Oskaloosa, said at least four bills are in the works, ranging from a texting ban to a proposal to define distracted driving and place it on a par with reckless driving. He wouldn't predict what will pass but said “the roads will be safer” at session's end. On the House side, a texting ban will win bipartisan passage, but gaining support for further steps is “problematic,” said Rep. Dave Tjepkes, ranking Republican on the Transportation Committee and a former state trooper.

Meanwhile, another lobbying group, the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, weighed in Tuesday with a “report card” aimed at prodding state legislatures to adopt an array of road safety laws.

It rated Iowa a yellow — the middle of three grades — largely on the strength of the state's “primary” seat-belt law, which allows police to stop and ticket motorists for that reason alone. Iowa's graduated licensing program for teens and its drunken-driving laws got middling-to-poor ratings.

The group rated Nebraska a red, the lowest grade, mainly because its seat-belt law is a “secondary” one, allowing citations only if the motorist is stopped for something else. Nebraska's drunken-driving laws got high marks, but its graduated licensing system for teens was judged weak.

Both states were dinged for lacking a texting ban for all drivers.

Contact the writer:  444-1140, roger.buddenberg@owh.com

original article url:  http://www.omaha.com/article/20100113/NEWS01/701139902