Texting ban has no impact, police say
Nearly a year after Georgia passed a ban on texting while driving, authorities in the Augusta area said they haven't seen a noticeable difference in crashes attributable to the law.
Capt. Steve Morris, a spokesman for the Columbia County Sheriff's Office, said that after the ban was implemented July 1, his agency did see a decrease of 49 reported accidents, or about 1 percent, in the final six months of 2010, compared with the last six months of 2009.
Morris said that was more likely because of other factors, such as the work of traffic engineers, traffic enforcement strategies and the struggling economy, combined with rising gas prices.
"We're very hesitant to say with absolute certainty that any decrease in crashes is caused by the texting law," said Morris, who added that the sheriff's office has no records on how many people have been pulled over for texting because officers generally issue oral warnings.
Sheriff's offices in Richmond and Columbia counties don't keep records of whether cell phones are involved in accidents.
Morris and Richmond County Sheriff Ronnie Strength both said it's difficult to tell whether a driver is making a call or texting; a handheld cellphone ban would be easier to enforce, though not necessarily more effective.
"It's not a matter of issuing tickets," Morris said. "It's a matter of educating people to avoid people getting in crashes."
Russ Rader, of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in Arlington, Va., pointed to studies by his organization showing that texting bans actually led to more crashes in three of the four states studied.
"It's difficult at the moment to see a law that would make a significant difference in reducing crashes," Rader said. "The (handheld) laws have been shown to cut handheld cell phone use by drivers, but the key is reducing crashes, and the laws haven't been shown to reduce crashes."
Jonathan Adkins, the communications director for the Governors Highway Safety Association in Washington, D.C., said the association supports texting laws, however, and believes they will become more effective as new enforcement techniques are developed.
Rader said the U.S. Department of Transportation is conducting a pilot project in Syracuse, N.Y., and Hartford, Conn., to see whether intensive enforcement of the laws successfully reduces crashes.
Strength stressed that his office fully supports the law, even though it's hard to say whether it's working.
"To the best of my knowledge, it's been working as well as it can," Strength said.