“When you’re behind the wheel, there’s no such thing as a small distraction.”

Says Chuck Husak, an ad man, in this New York Times article about the tolls of distracted driving.

But if there as no such thing as a small distraction, then that means there is no such thing as a big distraction either.  All distractions are equal.

Of course, everyone knows that that there in fact is such a thing as a small distraction behind the wheel.  For example:

• My ear itches.
• "The Long and Winding Road" comes on the radio, forcing me to change the station.
• The sun is in my eyes.
• Etc.

Conclusion:  all distractions are not equal.  Some are big, some are small.

The question is whether talking on a cell phone, or texting, is a big or small distraction.  Mr. Husak wants to convince us that both are big distractions by denying that there is even such a thing as a small distraction.  As my itchy ear proves, that is false.  When people use that kind of easily disprovable rhetoric, it gets my defenses up.  It puts me in contrarian mode.

I blogged about distracted driving the other day, in the context of the happy news that the traffic fatality rate reached an all-time low in 2010.  I asked whether cell phones and texting-while-driving can really be such a menace when it is getting so much safer to drive.

Now this latest article in the New York Times cites the National Safety Council as estimating that 28% of all car crashes are caused by cell phones or texting.  But, interestingly, the accident rate has already decreased by almost 35% in the cell phone era (since 1990).  (Note that we are talking about crashes here, not fatalities -- so increased seat belt use is irrelevant.)  The NSC thinks there would be an additional 28% decrease if the cell phone had never been invented.  That would mean fewer than half the crashes per mile in 2006 than occurred in 1990 (see Table 2-17 at link).  Is that credible?  Do we really believe that, except for the invention of the cell phone, it would be more than twice as safe to drive now than it was just 20 years ago?

I don't buy it. 

Here's my theory.  Driving is very boring, and people are capable of paying only so much attention to it.  Cell phones aren't the source of our distraction; they are its object.  If not for cell phones, people would be distracted by other things, or would just end up daydreaming.  In fact, maybe cell phones keep the roads safe by keeping people from daydreaming -- or by distracting them enough to keep them awake!