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When it comes to driving-with-a-phone techniques, this Southeast Portland driver is displaying what Hard Drive calls "the Captain Kirk." Just because it's not up to his ear doesn't mean it's legal.

(Joseph Rose/The Oregonian)

A high-tech, real-road study into driving behavior reaffirms research showing that texting, dialing and even reaching for a cellphone drastically increases the risk of crashing, especially among teen drivers.

However, in a finding that is completely at odds with most distracted-driving studies conducted in the past two decades, Virginia Tech researchers found that just talking on a phone isn't dangerous.



"Our analyses separated talking and dialing tasks and found that talking on a phone did not increase crash risk among experienced or novice drivers, while dialing increased risk for both groups, " said Tom Dingus, director of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and co-author of the study appearing in the Jan. 2 New England Journal of Medicine, in a statement.

Road safety advocates and distracted-driving researchers were quick to dismiss that part of the paper. Saying talking on a cell phone is as safe as completely abstaining from technology behind the wheel is akin to the occasional study showing eggs and bacon are a healthy breakfast, they said.

"It's just wrong," said Rob Reynolds, executive director of the Nebraska-based nonprofit Focus Driven, which advocates for outlawing cell phone use behind the wheel. "It flies in the face of a landslide of research showing that talking on the phone increases your risk of a crash by four times

Locally, Oregon Walks, a Portland-based advocacy group for pedestrians, said it was just one study and should be treated as such.



"Our streets are perilously unsafe for people walking already," said Aaron Brown, bprd president of Oregon. "When people are driving a ton of steel, we need to wait until there is overwhelmingly conclusive evidence before we start saying there's nothing wrong with drivers talking on the phone."

In 2012, the last year that statistics are available, distracted driving was responsible 3,199 crashes and seven traffic fatalities in Oregon, according to state statistics. By comparison, 2011 saw 3,191 crashes involving a distracted driver on state roads, resulting in 15 people killed.

David Strayer, a University of Utah professor of psychology who has conducted extensive research showing that using your cell phone to text and talk while driving is worse than drunk driving, questioned Virginia Tech's methodology and tools.



Funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, researchers wired the vehicles of the study's 151 drivers with at least four cameras, global positioning systems and myriad sensors to measure things such as speed, lane tracking and acceleration.

Strayer and Reynolds told The Oregonian that the study may have underestimated the risk of talking on the phone because it focused on wandering eyes without factoring cognitive disconnects.

Strayer also questioned the study's reliance on data showing equating near-crashes to the car swerving.

Besides running tests in driving simulators, Strayer and his researchers have spent thousands of hours observing driving behavior at intersections.

People talking on their phones don't tend to swerve outside of their lanes. "They're more likely to go straight through a red light or stop sign," he said."They're obviously still distracted."

The Virginia Tech study doesn't specify whether its drivers were talking on handheld or handsfree cell phone. But when it comes to risk, that doesn't make any difference, according to Strayer's decades of research. "Holding the phone is not the problem," Strayer said. "It's the mental distraction from the conversation."

In another criticism of the new study, Strayer said people tend to drive more cautiously when they know a camera and sensors are monitoring their every move.

That said, Strayer and Reynolds found other things to like in the in the Virginia Tech report.

Although most teenagers begin driving habits cautiously, they begin to multi-tasking more frequently – dialing cell phones, eating, and talking to passengers, playing with the radio – after just a few months behind the wheel, according to one key finding.

"Novice drivers are more likely to engage in high-risk secondary tasks more frequently over time as they became more comfortable with driving," Charlie Klauer, group leader for teen risk and injury prevention at Virginia Tech's Center for Vulnerable Road User Safety, in a statement.

"The increasingly high rates of secondary task engagement among newly licensed novice drivers in our study are worrisome as this appears to be an important contributing factor to crashes or near-crashes," added Klauer, who was the report's chief author.

Drivers from 15 to 20 represent 6.4 percent of U.S. motorists, but account for 11.4 percent of fatalities and 14 percent of police-reported injury crashes, research shows.

Among young drivers, the Virginia Tech research found that texting was actually less dangerous than reaching for or dialing a cell phone.

Reaching for a cellphone or dialing increased the risk of a crash or near-miss by sevenfold; it was fourfold when teen drivers were sending or receiving a text. Reaching away from the steering wheel for other items, looking at something alongside the road and eating also increased the chances of a crash, the study showed.

Among older, more-experienced drivers, only dialing a cellphone significantly amplified the chances of a crash, according to the research.

"The data revealed that compared to experienced drivers, novice drivers engaged in secondary tasks less frequently during the first six months," according to a Virginia Tech Transportation Institute statement on the study. "However, they matched experienced drivers between months seven and 15, and were engaged in non-driving tasks more often than experienced drivers during months 16 through 18 – a two-fold increase in risky distractions during the last three months of the study."

Oregon is one of 37 states drivers under 18 are completely banned from using a cell phone behind the wheel. Thirteen states, including Oregon and Washington, have outlawed driving while using hand-held cellphones, while 41 have banned texting on the roads.

-- Joseph Rose