Cellphones sound the call of disaster

KOLKATA: The next time you feel the urge to order a pizza from your mobile phone, or book tickets or flowers, fix date, seal a deal or arrange night out while sitting behind the wheel of a car, it could well be the last call you are making.
Kolkata is fast catching up with cities that have an alarmingly high rate of accidents due to drivers who talk on their cell phones while driving.
Mobile phone handset manuals may contain specific sections to advise cellphone users not to use a hand-held instrument while driving, but who’s listening?
Ask any cellular subscriber in the city and the chances are most have either not read the cautionary statement that "road safety always comes first" or just ignored it smug in the belief that where cars travel at an average speed of 20 km an hour, a split second break in concentration to make a call would not make any difference.
"When I got the phone, the thing uppermost in my mind was to familiarise myself with the various features available on the handset. I just did not find it necessary (to go through the safety information in the user''s guide)," said 24-year-old budding businessman Bappa Banerjee.
Both cellular service providers and police say this apathy has dangerous implications. While the data on mobile phone use by motorists in the city may be limited, a study released by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis in December 2002 said nearly 2,600 deaths and 330,000 moderate to critical injuries in the United States every year were caused by the use of cellphones while driving.
"The risks of car accidents have gone up appreciably since the mobile craze caught on among young people," DC traffic Piyush Pandey said.
"Some of the people who indulge in this activity forget they are just not risking their own lives but also endangering the safety of the occupants of their own vehicles and pedestrians," Pandey said.
Bharti Cellular CEO Deepak Gulati said operators actively encouraged responsible use of the mobile phone. "Using a hand-held phone while driving is a strict nono. It is illegal and very dangerous.
One can always use hands-free equipment if the need to make a call while driving is urgent." Gulati said.
Echoed Hutchison Telecom East chief Sunil Sood: "This tendency of using a handheld phone while at the wheels, should be stopped immediately so that it does not become a menace like drunken driving."
So should cellular operators or handset manufacturers step in with public service advertising to increase awareness among cellphone users about the dangers of driving and talking at the same time?
"It is the responsible concern of every manufacturer to do it" said Eveready Industries director Roshan Joseph. Cellphone service providers, however, say advertising is not a solution in itself.
"What use is advertising? Do helmet manufacturers advertise that people should be wearing helmets just because some people simply refuse to wear one despite the risk to their lives? The way to overcome the problem lies in strict enforcement of the existing provisions that term as illegal the use of handheld telephones while driving," Gulati said.
"With there being far fewer traffic policemen than needed, the chances of catching a person in the act of speaking on a hand-held cellphone while driving could only happen very rarely. And even if they do, police are often powerless to do much about the offence because the existing regulations are not strong enough.
"There is not much we can do in such cases," a traffic policeman admitted. A person would just have to pay a fine of Rs 100 if he is booked, making calls from a hand-held phone while driving, and that too only if he is unlucky enough to be spotted by a sergeant.
So till the day someone can come up with concrete solutions for avoiding cellphone driving disasters, all you can do is pray hard that you don''t end up being a statistic in the police register of those killed in road accidents.