Evanston Township High School will host a Distracted Driving Summit today to continue its push to eliminate dangerous habits behind the wheel.
Evanston police began enforcing a ban on cell phone use while driving last March, and the summit at ETHS, 1600 Dodge Ave., will extend the effort to raise awareness of the issue by presenting the science behind the ban, Ald. Jane Grover (7th) said. The event features panelists and local experts from groups such as AAA Chicago, Northwestern’s Traffic School at the Center for Public Safety and Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White.
Grover said she hopes that by organizing the summit at ETHS, young drivers and parents will leave the event with a better understanding of the dangers of distracted driving.
“Education efforts seem to be kind of piecemeal – that is, we educate individual drivers who have been stopped and ticketed, and I’m hoping that every driver that gets ticketed in Evanston is telling two or three other people, ‘Hey, you can’t use a cell phone in Evanston while you’re driving, and here’s the reason why,'” she said. “I wanted to see more of a concerted educational event.”
Thomas Moore, a sergeant at the Traffic Bureau said the number of distracted drivers arrested in Evanston shows no sign of decreasing. Evanston Police arrested 1,330 drivers last year for using a cell phone while driving, and they have arrested 506 so far this year.
“We get some people that are upset about it and think we have better things to do, but at our traffic unit, our main concern is the safety of our residents and the people travelling our streets, and distracted driving is a major factor in a lot of accidents,” Moore said. “It’s the new DUI of the day, I would say.”
The event also aims to introduce employers to enacting employee policies and training employees to encourage safe practices and reduce liability, said Mary Clark, director of NU’s Traffic Safety School. Distracted driving has been a focus for the clients the school serves, which include drivers who receive citations as well as corporations such as BP Amoco and Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Clark said.
Apart from hearing about the dangers of distracted driving, attendees can try their hand at texting while driving with a simulator from AAA Chicago, said community outreach and safety representative Nick Jarmusz.
“Drivers who text while they’re behind the wheel are 23 times more likely to crash. That’s just such a mind-blowing statistic that a lot of people have trouble even believing it,” Jarmusz said. “So that’s why with the simulator program, our goal is to not just give statistics and not just give horror stories of ‘this is what happened’ or cite specific examples, but to give people a real hands-on experience.”
Many young drivers do not take the problem seriously enough, said Doug Whitmore, former Illinois state trooper, panelist at the event and owner of the American Defensive Driving School, 1640 Orrington Ave.
“You’re not allowed to be on your cell phone as a young driver, so I tell the kids, ‘Hey, listen, no cell phones in the classroom for two hours,'” Whitmore said. “What I observe is kids will try to sneak and look at their cell phones, send text messages in class, and my rule from day one is if I catch you on a cell phone I’m going to take you out of class for that day. It’s a very, very serious problem, and I don’t think a lot of kids understand how dangerous it can be.”
The summit brings in many local experts, and the Active Transportation Alliance often points to Evanston as a good example when discussing efforts to eliminate distracted driving, marketing director Ethan Spotts said.
“When we get calls from the (Chicago) Tribune or other communities and they say, ‘What can we do?'” he said. “We say, ‘Here’s what Evanston’s doing. They’re doing a great job. You should look at what they’re doing.'”
