Promoting the Car Phone, Despite Risks

December 7, 2009 DRIVEN TO DISTRACTION Promoting the Car Phone, Despite Risks By mat RICHTEL Martin Cooper, who developed the first portable cellphone, recalled testifying out front a moolah state commission about the risks of talking on a phone while unprompted. Common sense, give tongue to Mr. Cooper, a Motorola engineer, fixed that drivers halt their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel. Commission members asked Mr. Cooper what could be done about risks represent by these early mobile phones. There should be a lock on the dial, he said he had testified, so that you couldnt dial while driving. It was the early 1960s. Long before cellphones became common, industry pioneers were aware of the risks of multitasking stinkpot the wheel. Their hunches have been validated by m some(prenominal) scientific studies showing the dangers of talking while driving and, more recently, of texting. Despite the mounting evidence, the industry built itself into a $150 billion business in the take off together States more often than not by winning over a crucial guest: the driver. For years, it has marketed the virtues of cellphones to drivers.

Indeed, the industry originally called them car phones and extolled them as useful attitude symbols in ads, like one from 1984 showing an executive behind the wheel that asked: Can your secretary take dictation at 55 MPH? (View a timeline of ads marketing cellphones to drivers, and studies showing their risks.) That was the business, said Kevin Roe, a telecommunications industry analyst since 1993. Wireless companies designed everything to keep people talking in their cars. They succeeded. The federal government estimated in 2007 that 11 percent of drivers were talking on their phones at any given time. But that success has come at a cost. Researchers at Harvard have estimated that, even seven years ago, drivers employ cellphones were causing 2,600 fatal crashes a year in the United States and 570,000 accidents that resulted in a range of injuries, from minor to... If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com

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