WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said today he will convene a summit of experts to figure out what to do about driver cell phone use and texting, practices that studies — and a growing number of accidents — show can be deadly.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told a news conference he intends to gather senior transportation officials, safety advocates, law enforcement representatives, members of Congress and academics who study distracted driving for the summit next month in Washington.

If it were up to him, he would ban texting while driving, LaHood said.

However, past safety initiatives like seat belts have shown that a simple ban often isn’t enough to get drivers to change their habits unless it’s accompanied by education and enforcement, he said.

“When we are done, I expect to have a list of concrete steps to announce,” LaHood said in a statement.

“The bottom line is, we need to put an end to unsafe cell phone use, typing on BlackBerrys and other activities that require drivers to take their eyes off the road and their focus away from driving.”

LaHood pointed to several fatal incidents involving texting, including Alyssa Burns, a 17-year-old Eureka, Ill., high school student killed in June when she drove off the road while sending a message to friends

The problem crosses other modes of transportation: A train crashed last year in California killing 25 people — including the train operator, who was texting at the time of the accident — and injuring 135.

In a study released last week, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute found that when drivers of heavy trucks texted, their collision risk was 23 times greater than when not texting. Dialing a cell phone and using or reaching for an electronic device increased risk of collision about six times in cars and trucks.

The Virginia Tech researchers said the risks of texting generally applied to all drivers, not just truckers.

A separate report by Car and Driver magazine found that texting and driving is more dangerous than drunken driving.

Texting has grown from nearly 10 billion messages a month in December 2005 to more than 110 billion in December 2008, according to CTIA, the cellular phone industry’s trade group.

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have passed laws making texting while driving illegal.

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