It was an overcast Friday in February and Denise Snyder was already upset. She had taken the day off work to attend the funeral of a longtime friend.
Driving north on state Highway 503, she slowed for two turning vehicles. But when she looked in her rearview mirror, she saw a Kia Rio behind her still traveling at highway speeds. She said she could see that the teenage driver inside was not paying attention at all.
“I looked behind me and noticed that she wasn’t even looking up. She had her head down,” Snyder said. “I’m just about stopped, and she’s not stopping. I pulled over as far as I could to the right side of the road.”
Snyder hoped she was far enough out of the way. ” ‘Don’t hit me, don’t hit me, don’t hit me,’ ” Snyder said out loud to herself.
But she couldn’t prevent the collision. Snyder’s car was shoved into a ditch, and the Rio flipped, landing on its top in the middle of the road. Evidence collected by Washington State Patrol troopers at the scene show that the driver of the Rio, Sontia Christopher, then 17, of Amboy, didn’t swerve and never used her brakes, according to police.
Christopher had been texting, using Snapchat and was on FaceTime just before the crash, police said.
“I was in shock. I don’t think she’d had her license very long,” Snyder said. “She could have killed us both if I hadn’t been paying attention.”
By many accounts, Snyder and Christopher were lucky. Aside from totaling two vehicles, no one sustained serious injuries, no one died and no one faced serious charges. Christopher faces a charge of reckless driving, a gross misdemeanor, in Clark County District Court.
Christopher didn’t respond to requests to be interviewed for this story.
Statewide, fatalities from vehicle crashes that involved a distracted driver grew 30 percent from 2014 to 2015, according to the Washington State Traffic Safety Commission.
When it comes to serious-injury crashes that involved distracted driving, Clark County has a bigger problem than the state as a whole. In 2015, about 35 percent of serious-injury crashes involved a distracted driver in Clark County, while that number was only 28 percent statewide.
Between 2008 and 2013 in Clark County, an average of four people died each year in crashes that involved distracted driving. In 2014, that number was 10. In 2015, it was seven.
And while distracted driving includes eating, talking to passengers, fussing with the radio — anything that takes the driver’s attention away from the road — law enforcement officials say that a majority of distracted drivers are looking at cellphones.
A harmful habit
An increase in vehicle crashes was noticed by staff at the local trauma center at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center.
Data from the hospital shows that between 2014 and 2015, there was an 18 percent increase in patients treated for injuries sustained in motor vehicle crashes. Initial data from the first six months of 2016 also show that the upward trend isn’t slowing.
Dr. George Dulabon, regional medical director for trauma and acute care surgery for PeaceHealth’s Columbia region, said that the injured motorists he treats are usually hurt in crashes that either involved intoxicated driving or distracted driving.
“(Distracted driving) is one of the larger increases we’ve been seeing,” Dulabon said. “There really hasn’t been any change in baseline use of drugs or intoxicating substances.”
He said he often hears people readily admit to their mistake of paying attention to a mobile device instead of the road — but Dulabon said it’s a lesson they’re learning too late.
“In a millisecond, somebody’s life can be changed radically for the worse, and it’s tragic when that happens,” he said. “There’s no phone call, no text, nothing in the purse that critical that’s worth taking your eyes off the road and your hands off the wheel.”
An increased dependence on technology is hard to ignore.
In a poll by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group focused on helping families and policymakers negotiate technology, 50 percent of teens surveyed said they felt addicted to their mobile device. Seventy-two percent of teens felt the need to immediately respond to a text, social network message or other notification, the same poll showed.
But the habit isn’t one that just teenagers have adopted.
Fifty-six percent of their parents said they check their mobile devices while driving, and 51 percent of teens have seen their parents practice that behavior, the poll found.
When surveyed, more than two in three people said they had talked on a cellphone while driving in the past month, and nearly one in three said they do so fairly often, according to a 2015 Traffic Safety Culture Index published by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
An outdated law
In Washington, it is illegal for drivers to hold a cellphone to the ear and to send, read or write a text message while driving. Violating the law could result in a $124 ticket.
But the law hasn’t been updated since it took effect in 2008, so it does not account for all of the other things drivers can do with a cellphone.
Last year, state Sen. Ann Rivers, R-La Center, proposed a bill that would expand the law to include reading or entering information into a wireless device. Checking social media on a smartphone or tablet while driving would result in a $325 ticket for a second offense under one draft of Rivers’ measure.
Her proposal, however, didn’t have the support it needed in the House and failed.
“The bill has detractors,” Rivers said. “People say, ‘you’re trying to impact my civil liberties’ … but we have to be reasonable and pragmatic about it.”
Rivers said she’s constantly hearing from constituents who tell her stories similar to Snyder’s, and similar to one that has affected Rivers more personally.
“My husband was in an automobile accident. He was sitting at a stoplight, and the person who hit him from behind was looking down at their phone. … He felt helpless,” she said.
Rivers said she has made some tweaks to the bill and plans to propose it during the next legislative session.
“This has become a plague,” she said. “Everyone thinks that they are that rare animal that can multitask. … We’ve become slavish to convenience, and the unfortunate reality is it’s taken a real human toll.”
Enforcement
Even if the bill passes, it may be difficult to enforce.
Observation surveys conducted by the Washington Traffic Safety Commission show that between 2007 and 2011, 3.5 to 5 percent of drivers during the daytime hours were seen talking on cellphones. However, less than one-half of 1 percent of drivers who crashed during that time period were identified by police as using cellphones.
Traffic Safety Commission research investigator Dick Doane said he believes cellphone use is underrepresented in the collision data because officers cannot simply seize a driver’s cellphone. Doing so requires a warrant, which requires probable cause.
“People are involved in crashes where no one is killed, and they will swear on a stack of Bibles that they were not using their cellphones, they were not surfing the internet, they were not texting,” Doane said. “They hide their cellphone use, especially when involved in a crash.”
When someone sustains serious injuries or is killed in a crash, traffic investigators will invest the extra time and energy into making sure that what caused the crash is brought to light. When distracted driving results in injury or death, evidence of distraction can result in criminal charges, such as vehicular assault, which can lead to jail or prison time.
On its own, distracted driving is an infraction. Law enforcement typically won’t use resources to apply for a warrant to prove cellphone use alone, Washington State Patrol Trooper Will Finn said. If a suspected distracted driver causes a noninjury crash but isn’t cooperative with police and there were no witnesses, there isn’t too much more investigators will do, he said.
That doesn’t mean law enforcement isn’t paying attention. The State Patrol and other agencies regularly conduct stings to target and ticket distracted drivers.
The overall aim is safer driving habits — the same goal of Rivers’ bill.
“There’s no incentive like the pocketbook to get people to change their behavior,” Rivers said.
