Driver who crashed while using hands-free mobile cleared of killing

Miss Howden, 43, was at the end of long calls to her boyfriend and a work colleague when she lost control of her Mercedes CLK 220, swerved across the road and crashed.

The driver, radiographer Patricia Frostick, 55, was cut from her vehicle by firemen and put on board an air ambulance but she died from a heart attack before the helicopter could take off.

Howden, a director and head of sales at a business consultancy company, Insights, which has a turnover of £20 million, was accused of causing death by dangerous driving, which carries a possible prison sentence.

However a jury at Warwick Crown Court found her not guilty of that charge, and she was convicted instead of careless driving.

Judge Richard Griffiths-Jones banned her from driving for 12 months and fined her £2,000.

He told Howden: "I am very conscious that the sentence is going to appear out-of-kilter with the enormity of the consequences. I am not going to lecture about the consequences, which will be perfectly obvious to you and will stay with you for the rest of your life.

"What happened to you in this case is a lesson to us all about the dangers of talking on the phone while we drive."

Talking after the case, Mrs Frostick's husband Ian said he did not feel that he had been given an answer as to why the crash happened.

He said: "I am disappointed at the outcome of this case. All I wanted from this case was... an explanation for my wife's death. The defendant did not set out to kill my wife, but this is what her actions did."

Driving while using a hand-held mobile phone was banned in Britain in 2003, but bluetooth technology and devices with headphones and speakers are still allowed.

However, according to the Department for Transport, hands-free phones are still considered a distraction and drivers risk legal action if they drive erratically while using one.

In a police statement, Howden had said: "I was talking to my colleague about an email I had sent her the day before. I was just winding the conversation up and said something like, 'I'd better get off the phone so I can focus on my journey'. Before I could end the call I suddenly lost control. It was as if the steering wheel slipped through my hands and I hit the car on the other side of the road."

But the court heard that Miss Howden, from Long Buckby, Northants, was seen swerving across the road moments before the crash.

Miss Howden said: "I am a responsible, cautious driver. It is entirely legal to use a mobile phone with a hands-free kit. I regularly make and receive calls while driving. My car is effectively my office.''

Article from Telegraph

My View: Here’s an earful about the new cell phone law

Article taken from Sacbee.com

My friend called me the first day we became "hands free."

"I avost cost n agsidend!" he said.

"What?" I replied.

I heard him speaking again from underwater, "N agsidend! I ast cost un cuzuv m bootoov!"

As I hung up, tore my "hands free" device from my ear and threw it at the dashboard, I almost caused an accident. I pulled over to call him back. He explained that he had called to tell me that he almost caused an accident because of his "hands free" device.

Because of my anger at having to merge back into freeway traffic after stopping to hear my friend, I almost caused an "agsidend."

I saw in my mind the state Legislature and the governator proudly slapping each other on the back after signing the legislation that would save so many lives. (Do we have a budget yet?)

Don't they remember the excellent driver's training courses we took as teenagers, where we learned to drive a stick shift while holding a Big Gulp (no cup holders back then), changing our cassettes and watching for cops? No "hands free" devices back then, if I recall correctly.

Let me tally the ways my driving has improved by trying to keep the "hands free" device from falling out of my ear, or from reaching to grab it off the passenger's-side floorboard after an unsuccessful attempt at catching it.

I wonder if our lawmakers considered that holding the phone to your ear while driving is the easy part. Last I saw, my "hands free" device did not make the call for me. It also does not tell me who is calling, so I still have to pick up my phone to look at the incoming number.

Maybe the great state of California should tell me the foods that are safe to eat while driving or tell me I should not reach down to change my radio station.

Last I checked, my "hands free" device did none of this for me.

Since July 1, with my "hands free" device in my ear, I have almost caused accidents while staring in disbelief at the drivers next to me who were applying makeup, shaving and even reading a newspaper (probably this one) while driving.

Why did my "hands free" device not warn me about rubbernecking at someone changing a tire at the side of the road while traffic in front of me came to a stop to do the same thing? Maybe the "hands free" devices should be equipped with a brake-light warning device so we can avoid these very types of accidents.

The other day, I had to turn down the volume of that sexy British voice on my GPS system so that I could make out what my client was trying to tell me through my "hands free" device. After the phone call I realized that my GPS had tried several times to recalculate where I was, and I decided to punch in the new coordinates of my next stop and come back later to the place I passed up several miles back.

While performing this task on Interstate 5, my "hands free" device fell from my ear and this time landed under the gas pedal. Having to take my foot off the gas to reach underneath, my foot accidentally rested on the brake pedal, slowing me down exponentially and causing me to bump my ear (the same ear that holds my "hands free" device) on the steering wheel.

I sat back up and found my left ear was too swollen for the "hands free" device. As I was twisting the earpiece to now fit into my right ear and reaching into my lunch bag for the ice pack, I saw that many empathetic drivers (having obviously encountered similar situations) were now staring at me instead of the road and extending to me the finger of understanding. Evidently, their "hands free" device does not do this for them.

This all just happened a few minutes ago, and since I already had my laptop out on the passenger seat and my wireless card plugged in, I decided to log on to Sacbee.com to write this letter to share my story. It looks like traffic may be slowing ahead, so I had better keep one eye on the road and get back to RSVPing to my 20-year reunion with my other – yet another thing my "hands free" device does not do for me.

Article taken from Sacbee.com

Hands-Free Safe Driver

I think we can all take a leaf out of his book. Funny Break.com movie showing how to correctly use the hands-free devices - Enjoy!

Hands Free Safe Drivers - Watch more free videos

New California Hands-Free Law Will Save 300 Lives Annually

The new law coming into effect tomorrow [July 1st] is set to save 300 lives per year, almost 1 human-life every day, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

It's a startling statistic, but it's at odds with data from the California Highway Patrol that shows gabbing on a cellphone was a factor in just six fatal accidents in 2006, the last year for which data was available. Joe Kolko, who conducted the study, said the problem isn't with his data, but the CHP's. He says the number of cellphone-related traffic fatalities are grossly under-reported.

"Mobile phone use can't be measured accurately at the time of a traffic collision," he said. "A driver may hang up to avoid looking negligent, and police can't easily access mobile-phone records."

California's new law will require drivers to use hands-free devices when dialing and driving. These devices will allow the driver to use both his hands for driving, not wasting a hand holding his cell. The law also bans anyone under 18 from using a cellphone or other mobile device behind the wheel. Kolko says the law will save 300 lives per year.

How did he come up with so specific a figure?

Kolko collected data on mobile-phone ownership and traffic fatalities for all 50 states, then examined the effects of hands-free laws in the states -- New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and the District of Columbia - where they are in effect. Chicago and Santa Fe, New Mexico, have municipal ordinances requiring hands-free phones, and Washington state's law takes effect July 1.

Kolko discovered that traffic deaths during bad weather fell 52 percent within six months of the laws' taking effect. Fatalities on wet roads dropped 38 percent and rush-hour deaths fell 17 percent.

Data from New York, which enacted the nation's first hands-free law in 2001, suggests the pattern holds up over the long haul. Four years after the law passed, traffic fatalities during lousy weather or on wet roads were down about 64 percent. Kolko assumed California would see similar declines and applied those figures to the number traffic fatalities in adverse conditions to arrive at 300 lives saved per year.

Kolko says his estimate is "conservative," but it's still well above the CHP's data, which shows no more than eight cellphone-related traffic fatalities a year between 2004 and 2006. Kolko says collisions caused by people yakking on a phone are under-reported because it's tough to determine after the fact if the phone was a factor.

He also says previous attempts to study the impact of cellphones on traffic fatalities are "are all over the map. Some find no effect from mobile-phone use on collisions, and others find very large effects." He argues those studies relied on surveys of drivers and lab simulations and didn't predict the effects of hands-free laws.

Other studies have concluded that talking on a phone while driving is much more dangerous than either the CHP figures or the PPIC study suggests, regardless of whether the driver is using a hands-free device or not. The United States lags behind the rest of the developed world when it comes to mandating hands-free phones in traffic. More than 45 countries, including Germany, France, Great Britain, Japan and Australia, require hands-free phones behind the wheel.

It took six years to pass California's law, which was written by state Sen. Joe Simitian, Dem-Palo Alto, and it faced intense lobbying by the cell phone industry. Joe Farren, a spokesman for the mobile-phone trade group CTIA, says the group encourages hands-free use of phones while driving.

The hands-free companies must be happy with the new law, which they will feel with increased sales. Different devices are available to the public, from a wired headpiece to high-tech bluetooth hands-free devices connected to the cars sound system.

Article adapted from Wired