Out of Control Distracted drivers struggle to keep eyes on the road in Houston region

Out of Control Distracted drivers struggle to keep eyes on the road in Houston region

Fifth in an occasional series

In the wreckage of the crash, police found Gabriela Torga's phone on the floorboard of her SUV, near the accelerator.

Torga, 23, was driving alone just after 5 a.m. on March 19, 2017, headed east on Clay Road in Deerfield Village when she veered suddenly from the fast lane to the right shoulder. She tried to correct her path but pulled too far too fast. Even though the road was dry, she slid counter-clockwise, clipping the raised median and sending the Toyota 4Runner sideways before it slammed into a tree.

No one can say for certain whether the crash that killed Torga was directly connected to her cellphone. Police can only say that when she crashed, the phone was on and open to SnapChat while she was going 55 mph in a 45 zone.

Drivers in Houston know if they look to their left or right, there is a good chance they will see someone paying more attention to their phone than the road ahead. A recent survey conducted by Zendrive, which monitors mobile-phone use for trucking and delivery companies, showed that Houston had more distracted drivers than any other city measured. Nearly one in 12 drivers were observed using their phones, up from one in 20 the previous year.

Other studies over the years have shown similar growth in cellphone use while driving by the region's motorists, including an analysis by the Houston-Galveston Area Council. It found that distraction-related crashes grew 23 percent from 2012 through 2016.

OUT OF CONTROL: Read our entire series here

In the nine-county Houston metropolitan area, the number of fatal and injury crashes in which distraction was identified as a likely cause jumped from 5,796 in 2011 to 8,211 in 2016, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of state crash records. Most of those resulted in minor injuries. During the same period, however, those killed or seriously injured increased from 509 to 735, according to crash data maintained by the Texas Department of Transportation.

The spike in disastrous distracted crashes, which officials note declined in 2017 but remains above 2011 levels, helped fuel a troubling period on the region's roadways. The Houston area is the deadliest in the country for drivers, passengers and people in their paths, a Chronicle analysis shows.

Along with speeding and alcohol and drug impairment, safety officials say distracted driving is reaching epidemic levels, even if it is not being blamed for the bulk of the body count.

The question remains what drivers, police, automakers, safety advocates, and lawmakers can do — through technology, education or laws — to keep drivers focused on driving and to create a culture that condemns many popular roadway pastimes.

"I feel very certain as a society we will get to a point to say it is not acceptable," said Deborah Hersman, president of the National Safety Council. "We're not there yet. It takes time. I certainly remember ashtrays everywhere at work and in restaurants, and now we know."

Still, the issue has taken a back seat to other matters in Texas, one of the last states to ban texting while driving. Even then, lawmakers carved out a host of exceptions that allow drivers to use their phones in other ways behind the wheel.

Many police and sheriff departments, meanwhile, do not actively enforce the ban.

"It's a very hard case to prove," Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne said. "And I personally don't want my deputies to write tickets on anything they can't 100 percent swear on the fact the person was committing a violation of law."

Hawthorne's department had not issued a single ticket in the first nine months after the ban went into effect in September 2017.

Deadly diversions

The problem of distracted driving is as old as the automobile. Cellphones get the bulk of the blame of late, but safety experts say a range of features and pastimes — from stereos to food to the seemingly endless variety of gauges, indicators and dashboard displays — can present a danger. Sometimes the distraction is not even inside the vehicle; roadside vistas or startling scenes draw drivers' attention away from the lanes ahead. As long as people have passengers or the propensity to daydream, drivers will always have something else on their minds.

The issue has particular relevance in Houston and Texas, where cars are personal and sacred spaces, in part because of how much time drivers spend in them. The average one-way commute in the Houston area is nearly 30 minutes, and it is not uncommon for workers to spend an hour or more in the car each morning and evening.

DANGEROUS STREETS: Houston's roads, drivers are country's most deadly

So drivers pass the time as pleasantly or as usefully as they can. They listen to music or podcasts. They make work or personal phone calls. They eat and drink. During the morning commute, drivers can check their rear-view mirrors and see a man making last-minute hair fixes or a woman applying makeup. Many are doing multiple things at once, such as smoking a cigarette while holding their phone while reaching to turn down the radio or grab a sip of coffee.

All of it adds up to distraction. Safety experts have zeroed in on cellphones, mostly because the devices have become ubiquitous in everyday life. Most drivers, however, have not yet adjusted, or learned when to put them down:

⬛ A national survey of more than 2,600 drivers published in March by The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that nearly half reported recently talking on a cellphone while driving, and more than a third said they had sent a text or email while behind the wheel.

⬛ DriversEd.com, an online driving school that tracks and surveys driver habits, found in its 2018 distracted driving survey that 11 percent of drivers keep typing even when they are moving at posted speeds. Another 8 percent admitted to watching video sites, such as YouTube, while driving.

⬛ Root Insurance, which tracks policy holders as part of its pricing, found in a survey that 19 percent of American drivers say they cannot drive more than 30 minutes without checking their phones.

⬛ When Envista Forensics, which investigates insurance claims, asked drivers how they justified driving distracted, 20 percent said they could multi-task, despite reams of studies noting motorists lose needed focus when attempting any other activity.

'A no-brainer'

Alexander Marshall often talked on the phone while driving, but his mother said he always used a Bluetooth headset. Investigators cannot say if he was using the earpiece on his way to Dallas on the morning of Dec. 21, 2016, but his cellphone was active as Marshall, 28, steered a rented truck carrying mostly liquor up the ramp from northbound Interstate 69 to westbound Loop 610.

Traveling too fast for the ramp — signs tell drivers to take the tight curve at 30 mph — Marshall lost control and struck the concrete wall. The truck tumbled over the barrier, plunging more than 30 feet to the freeway below, where it burst into flames, killing Marshall.

It was weeks before Marshall's phone use was verified. Early accounts of the crash only mentioned speed as a cause.

In Houston and Texas, motorists say it is a matter of "do as I say, not as I do" where people bemoan all the drivers with their eyes on their screens or their sandwiches, then grab their own phones to snap a photo of the offender.

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In 2016, three young women died near Corpus Christi when their vehicle veered into the path of an oncoming 18-wheeler. Police said the driver had taken her eyes off the road to look at a map on her phone.

Toron Wooldridge lost his two sisters that day. Passengers Brianna and Jade Robinson were 19 and 17.

"It's been a very tough loss for our family," said Wooldridge, 37.

For two years after the crash, he worked in Beaumont and had to commute for two hours early every morning. He remembers the "cellphone glow" emitting from other cars.

"It's an epidemic that needs to be changed," Wooldridge said. "This is a no-brainer. You can't operate a vehicle and look at your cellphone at the same time. You have to concentrate on the road."

Many, however, do not, and sometimes cannot be bothered to follow rules they want enforced on others. According to the AAA Foundation study, 59 percent of drivers polled said they believed talking on a cellphone while driving was dangerous, and 78 percent said they believe that texting was a "significant danger."

Americans, however, have fallen in love with the convenience of all manner of features at their fingertips at any time.

"It's the smartphone that has become the problem, now. We're not just talking and texting," said Jennifer Smith, an advocate for efforts to curb distracted driving whose mother was killed in a 2008 crash caused by a driver talking on his phone. "Kids don't even text anymore. They Snapchat."

Irregular reporting

Critics downplay the risk and decry the reaction by legislators seeking to address the problem with new laws, calling them intrusive and ineffective. They argue that daydreaming causes more crashes than phone use. Houston-area crash data from the Texas Department of Transportation appears to bear that out, in part.

From 2010 through 2017, there were 4,997 roadway fatalities in the region, and crash reports listed a cellphone being in use in only 60 of them.

RELATED: Houston is 'ground zero' for drunken and drugged driving

Safety officials, however, say the statistics are not capturing the full scope of the issue.

"It's very difficult to determine if someone was using their cellphone if there's a crash unless they admit to it," said Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, which advocates nationally for tougher phone laws. "The first thing you're going to do if you have a crash and you're on your phone, is hide your phone. ... We're quite certain it's underreported."

Confirming distractions, including the use of a cellphone behind the wheel, can be time-consuming and rarely possible at the scene unless witnesses come forward.

"We didn't find out until three years later," recalled Patricia Small, whose daughter, Megan, was killed in a head-on crash caused by a man using his phone as she returned to Baylor University from Thanksgiving break in 2007. November 25th is the 11th anniversary of the crash.

A grand jury declined to indict the driver, and his use of his cellphone only came out in the lawsuit Small and her husband filed. She since has become a statewide advocate for distracted driving laws.

Officials stress they cannot rely simply on education or public safety campaigns.

"It can't be just us wagging our finger at people and saying 'do good,'" said Stephan Gage, principal transportation planner for the Houston-Galveston Area Council who led development of the Houston region's transportation safety plan.

Dialed-up danger Texas drivers logged nearly 38,000 roadway crashes involving cell phones from 2010 to 2017, with more than 1,600 fatalities or serious injuries. Source: Texas Crash Records Information System | Created by Rachael Gleason

Ban stuck in neutral

At this point, law enforcement barely is lifting a finger to force drivers to change their habits.

Area police departments rarely — if ever — cite or warn drivers for texting while driving. A survey of the region's largest law enforcement agencies found that most issued just a handful of texting-while-driving tickets from Sept. 2017, to July 31, 2018.

Numerous departments issued fewer than 10 tickets. In Galveston County, population 335,000, deputies ticketed one driver.

In Liberty and Chambers counties, deputies did not cite a single motorist.

The Houston Police Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety were the only agencies across the nine-county region that issued more than 100 citations.

HPD issued 1,630 texting-while-driving citations, a fraction of the tens of thousands of speeding tickets it issues every year.

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"I still see people weaving back and forth and changing lanes without safety, and coming into my lane, and speeding up and slowing down," said Lt. Kevin Duggan, who has spent more than a decade working in HPD's Traffic Enforcement Unit. "As soon you get up next to them, you see they've got that cellphone in their hands and they're looking down."

State troopers issued 222 citations during the same period.

Locally and nationally, there is a belief among some in law enforcement that catching distracted drivers is outside normal police practices. In a manual made for police by federal safety officials, researchers said policing phone use is "to some degree is contrary to traditional patrol strategies."

Most stops, Duggan said, result from police witnessing the offense themselves.

"When they see a driver that has a phone up to their face, and they can look over and see that person on their phone and they're typing away, and they make a stop," he said. "And the person readily admits, 'Yeah, I screwed up, I was texting and driving.' "

In Texas, the law itself can be a barrier to enforcement. The state's ban on texting while driving includes several carve-outs in the use of a phone, from using navigation systems to playing music to answering potential emergency communications, that may stall police from enforcing the law, said Hawthorne, the Chambers sheriff. He acknowledged, however, that driving distractions — especially phones — are rampant.

READ MORE: Texas texting law has a few loopholes

"I think telephone use and distracted driving is actually considerably higher than what people want to give it credit," Hawthorne said. "I think a cellphone/mobile device is as dangerous — and maybe even more dangerous — than some of the other driving issues we have, like DWI."

Nor are prosecutors fully using the tools at their disposal: Texas' texting-while-driving ban allows prosecutors to seek up to a year in jail or a $4,000 fine in distracted driving crashes that result in death.

Harris County prosecutors, however, have not filed that charge in any case.

Records in Houston's municipal courts, where city police tickets land, shows of the 1,282 texting while driving cases resolved, 516, or 40 percent, were dismissed at trial.

The law's exceptions for allowable cellphone use make it almost impossible to prosecute, said Sean Teare, head of the Harris County District Attorney's Vehicular Crimes Unit.

"I don't care if you're staring at your phone to change your music or you're looking at a map. You're still not looking at the road when you're driving a 3,500-pound deadly weapon 70 miles an hour on the road," Teare said.

A motorist uses a cell phone while driving in traffic. A motorist uses a cell phone while driving in traffic. Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez/Staff Photographer Photo: Godofredo A. Vasquez/Staff Photographer Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Out of Control: Distracted Houston drivers struggle to keep eyes on the road 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

Slow to move

Further complications come from the way courts assess blame in crashes, said John Choate, a Conroe defense lawyer. Often, crashes are civil matters, even when there is injury or death, Choate said. Lately, when cellphones are involved, prosecutors push for criminal charges.

Choate, who in 2009 defended a Humble woman in one of the region's first homicide cases related to cellphone use, said even legal experts debate the differences in the burden of proof between civil and criminal trials.

"If lawyers can't look at it and understand it, how can juries?" Choate said.

Though his client was found guilty, the woman was sentenced to 30 days in jail, 10 years of probation and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine, among the lightest sentences the jury could impose. Along with advocates for tougher laws, Choate said improvements can be made.

"I think there are smart enough brains in our legislature to figure that out," he said.

More than a decade after her daughter's death, Patricia Small remains hopeful Texas can achieve similar results through better legislation, starting with the 2017 ban —flaws and all.

THE WAY FORWARD: 'Do not disturb', safe-driving contests, tougher local laws

"We got the ball rolling," she said. "We had to get this part done and we all knew that. Then it can be hands-free or all use. Texting is not the only thing people do on their phones."

The driving culture is where drunken driving or seat belt use were before public pressure led to stepped-up enforcement and a subsequent decrease in fatalities, said Noah Budnick, director of data practice and policy for Zendrive, which tracks driver behavior for insurers and trucking companies.

"Distracted driving is at the beginning of a similar change," Budnick said. "Hopefully, it won't take as long as belts and booze. Thousands of lives hang in the balance."

Dug Begley is the transportation writer for the Houston Chronicle. Contact him at dug.begley@chron.com. Follow him on Twitter @DugBegley.

St. John Barned-Smith joined the Houston Chronicle in 2014 and covers public safety and major disasters. He has worked on two teams named Pulitzer finalists in recent years – for covering Hurricane Harvey and for helping show how Texas unlawfully denied education services to children with special needs. He previously reported in Philadelphia and Maryland and spent two years in the Peace Corps in Paraguay. Follow him on Twitter or email tips to st.john.smith@chron.com.

Photos by Houston Chronicle photo staff

Graphics by Rachael Gleason and Jordan Rubio

Design by Jordan Rubio

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