Driving reporter demonstrates hazards of cellphone use

I'm standing in Qwest Field's parking lot on a chilly morning to drive an obstacle course while blabbing and texting on a cellphone. And to demonstrate the obvious: It impairs driving.

State Sen. Tracey Eide, D-Federal Way, invited media to the exercise because she's introducing legislation Monday to make it a primary offense, rather than a secondary one, to drive while using a cellphone that isn't hands-free.

That means police wouldn't have to wait for you to commit a first violation to bust you for checking e-mail behind the wheel.

Drivers with intermediate licenses or learner's permits wouldn't be allowed to use any kind of wireless communication device. The fine: $124, but more if you cause a collision and injure someone. Rep. Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle, is sponsoring a companion bill in the House.

Eide cites research that driving while cell blabbing makes you as likely to crash as someone with a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level (the legal limit), and 23 times more likely to crash if you're texting.

She admonishes us, "We do not get into a vehicle to get on our phones. We get into a vehicle to get from point A to point B safely."

I get a jarring flashback to my high-school driver's ed instructor, Mr. Henry: "You're gonna be laughing real hard when you wake up DEAD!"

But thinking of a friend who'd gotten T-boned and injured by a teenage driver on a cell — not to mention countless near-misses that prompted me to finger-shoot other drivers like Charles Bronson — it seems the legislation doesn't go far enough.

I ask Eide if she'd consider a law like the ones adding worse penalties to crimes that involve guns: Cause a wreck while you're on a cellphone, go to Gitmo. She doesn't find that feasible.

The cars are boxy little Scions. Not exactly what Steve McQueen would have torn through San Francisco in.

In the back seat for instruction: day-glo-jacketed Jeff Maher of Swerve Driver Training. First, we run through the obstacle course of what Maher calls "green cone children" cell-free. Some of it's hard even without the distractions because of abrupt flashing lights that dictate which direction to drive.

Next, I take a run-through talking on the phone.

Since we're journalists, we should also be holding coffee, smoking and perhaps shaving. Or in the case of the TV people, putting on makeup.

I'm thinking "French Connection" and, hitting the gas, I plow into a couple of cones.

Now for driving while texting. I'm swerving around cones, thumbing in a message with the phone in the 12 o'clock position, and Jeff The Instructor is shouting at me to go faster. Get off my back, dude.

Jeff The Instructor is POUNDING ON THE BACK OF MY SEAT to get me to go faster. I want Mr. Henry to meet this man and then apologize to me.

I stop the Scion at the course's end after clumsily texting "blourgh do I neefa drk" — and I haven't hit a single cone while texting!

High fives with Jeff The Instructor seem inappropriate, though.

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com