The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on Tuesday urged states to ban cell phone use while driving, the first such call by a federal agency.
The NTSB said that distracted driving, some of it due to cell phone use, contributed to nearly 4,000 highway deaths last year, citing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data.
“According to the National Safety Council, drivers using cell phones look but fail to see up to 50 percent of the information in their driving environment,” the NTSB said in its recommendation.
The agency also said that in a national survey by AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, 69 percent of Americans reported that they’ve talked on their cell while driving in the last 30 days and 24 percent said they’ve texted or emailed while driving recently.
In Florida, bills that would prohibit kids under 18 from talking-while-driving are filed by a Senate Republican and a House Democrat, while another bill, carried Republicans in both chambers, would ban texting and driving.
But the House Democrat sponsoring the bill to ban kids under 18 from using cell phones while driving said Tuesday he wasn’t confident the NTSB recommendation would go very far to move along his proposal, which he fears will die in an unfriendly House committee.
“Unfortunately for the state of Florida, all these road safety bills are bottled up in a drawer,” said Rep. Irv Slosberg, D-Boca Raton.
