Please, Don’t Ban Texting While Driving!

Responsible texting can be safe

I live in Washington state, which is one of many states to ban making phone calls on handheld devices while driving. No one actually pays attention to the ban, as evidenced by my recent count of six cars in a row with drivers chatting it up with phones glued to their ears.

An easy way around that ban is to send a quick text rather than having an entire conversation. Texting is faster and can be done at a red light in the time it takes for it to turn green, leaving time to devote the required attention to driving while still meeting my communication needs.

Now though, a group of 11 automakers has formed the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (AMM) to push for an all-out ban on texting while behind the wheel.

I’m not going to say that I think texting while driving is completely safe… it’s far from safe when the car is moving. But I do believe there’s a time and a place where it’s OK, such as while stopped at a red light. In those few moments when I have nothing else to do, I don’t want anyone telling me I can’t send a note to my wife telling her I’m x-ited 2 C her 2 nite.

Then there’s this little contradictory gem: Some states offer a service sending text message updates on traffic and weather conditions. Will that be outlawed too? Reading a text message is probably more dangerous than sending one, as seasoned text pros can compose messages without even looking at their phones.

Texting while driving is often compared to drinking and driving, which I think is absurd since texting can done responsibly. (I’ve never known anyone who could be drunk only at red lights.) Drunk driving is a serious and dangerous offense… texting doesn’t have to be any more involved than changing the radio station or adjusting the iPod (uh-oh… watch iPod bans come next).

If I want to send and read texts when I feel it is safe to do so, I want that right. The biggest consequence I see is getting honked at for being a moment late in realizing the light turned green, and that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

What are your views on texting while driving? Should it be outlawed to text while behind the wheel?

-tgriffith

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Feds Call for Distracted Driving Summit: It’s About Time!

Yesterday, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called for a September summit to investigate the dangers of texting and other deviant behavior while driving.

People in America got fed up with their children and loved ones being killed by drunk drivers. And people in America are very tired of the idea that people can text and drive and use cellphones and drive in some states.

…

If it were up to me, I would ban drivers from texting, but unfortunately, laws aren’t always enough. We’ve learned from past safety awareness campaigns that it takes a coordinated strategy combining education and enforcement to get results. That’s why this meeting with experienced officials, experts and law enforcement will be such a crucial first step in our efforts to put an end to distracted driving.

[Quotes from The New York Times and a DOT news release.]

The Secretary’s message implies, and state efforts demonstrate, the great difficulty of enforcement. We’ve seen the same thing with seat-belt and drunk-driving laws, and many of us remember how long these measures took to take hold.

We’ve seen a recent slew of articles and news reports about cell phones and other distractions (including ours, here and here). But the issue goes back several years and has always been bubbling on the back of the stove.

Sixteen states, including California, and Washington, DC, have passed laws prohibiting texting while driving, but that’s not the only problem by a long shot. The LA Times reports that “Earlier this year, a 56-year-old Illinois woman on a motorcycle was struck and killed by a woman who was applying nail polish while driving.”

We leave you with one more instance of impossible behavior posted two years ago:

Mark Stevens is a multitasking maniac. A couple of months ago, the White Plains, New York, marketing consultant was working his cell phone with one hand and his Blackberry with the other while trying to steer his Mercedes SL500 with his wrists and knees—when he plowed it into a rental vehicle in an Enterprise parking lot. That followed his fourth ticket in four years for talking on his cell phone while driving.

“If you are a determined multitasker, it’s an addiction—and you can’t stop it,” said the 59-year-old Stevens.

Talk about distracted driving. Even during a short trek, he said, he’s likely to sip a Diet Coke and a bottled water, eat a sandwich, read a copy of The Economist, write notes to himself and listen to NPR, in addition to performing his cell phone and Blackberry action—oh, and driving. “I’m a driven person, and that’s why I do all this stuff while I drive.”

Driven person? Mark Stevens should be driven to jail. This stuff would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. Ray LaHood is moving in the right direction.

Do you have any stories of distracted driving—either your own or someone else’s? Do you think the DOT summit will do any good?

—jgoods

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Fiat Is Still Hungry

We hear that Sergio Marchionne has started talks with GM to buy Opel—and most of GM’s European operations. The Fiat CEO has some appetite. Without so much as a burp after digesting Chrysler last week, he pulls up to another table for what could be an even bigger meal.

If he gets GM and the German government to agree, the deal would give Fiat another new car company, including Chrysler, Opel, and Vauxhall (U.K.), potentially generating some $105 billion per year. Marchionne believes consolidation is inevitable in the car industry and an individual firm can’t be viable unless it produces around 5 million units a year. The GM deal would give Fiat at least a 5.5 million car capacity, and maybe as much as 7 million.

The Fiat-Chrysler-Opel alliance actually makes some sense. GM must find a partner to run Opel (whose Insignia we praised) by June 1 or bankruptcy looms. While it has other suitors, the synergy with Fiat would be better, and it’s a great fit for the latter.

There are lots of problems, however, not least of which is present overcapacity (estimated by the unions to be 1 million vehicles). There will be big debt for the new company—some 20 billion euros if the deal goes through. And then there’s the small matter of convincing the German government to kick in 3.3 billion euros to (maybe) guarantee investor loans to finance the acquisition. Fiat will likely need to terminate thousands of Opel jobs in a bad recession, no easy prospect for the government to face, as the European economy is expected to grow still worse.

So maybe Sig. Marchionne is biting off more than he can chew. It’s always fascinating to watch an overreacher, even at the dinner table.

As my mother used to say, “pigs is pigs.”

Tell us what you think would be the good things about a Fiat-Chrysler-GM combination. What kinds of cars would we get?

—jgoods

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Imaginary Management at GM

It’s kind of like driving drunk: You think you’re doing just fine, and bam, you’re pulled over (or you hit the wall). From everything I know, GM leadership has been so insulated, so obtuse, so drunk, if you will, that they finally hit the brick wall. And like any good drunk, they denied everything and refused the breathalyzer test.

Here’s why they got bailed out without having to spend even one night in jail:

In April 2008, General Motors ranked as the world’s ninth-largest public company [my emphasis] by revenue, according to the Forbes Global 2000 list. GM’s revenues outpaced every company in the world except for eight, and every car company in the world save Toyota. Yet, GM finished at #573 in the overall rankings. And for the same year, GM lost a net of nearly $40 billion—ranking dead last among the world’s public companies. From this cursory view, it would appear that GM’s products are selling just fine—second-place in its industry, and 9th across all industries—and instead that GM’s troubles run deeper than just products.

In this piece, Forrester researcher Chris Townsend points out the lack of systemic innovation behind GM’s fall. Well, sure, we all can recognize that. But what is it about the company’s failed management that stifled innovation and produced its “fortress mentality”? When its market stopped expanding in the early ‘70s, why did it fail to adjust? Why did it continue drinking the same old booze?

Bob Sutton, a researcher who has studied GM over the years, has some answers. They reveal a management out of touch with its competition, with its employees, with its customers, and with its market. These are people who imagined they were doing their jobs while the world changed around them.

Foremost in Sutton’s indictment is the top-down, kiss-ass culture at GM:

The norm in meetings is that the highest status person in the room does all or most of the talking. Plus, more so than any organization I have ever dealt with, employees are expected to express agreement with their bosses. Why didn’t anyone have the guts to tell the executives that taking a private plane to beg for a bailout was a bad idea? I suspect that it is just standard operating procedure: GM is a culture where subordinates are expected to shut-up and kiss-up when the boss is around.

Also, managers get cars as perks (some with drivers), but their cars are handpicked off the line, and the system sees to it that maintenance is taken care of. Naturally, these folks don’t go through the arduous process of dealing with dealers for shopping, purchase, service, or sale of a car. In other words, they are totally insulated from the realities of car ownership. Nor do they EVER drive a competitor’s car.

Thus, GM people are managing in a bubble, in a woozy dreamworld where they become victims rather than actors, where no one steps up to the plate, where the answer is usually “no, we can’t” when innovations are suggested.

The fact is that their bankruptcy has been going on for years. Sutton says that GM’s failure makes him sick: “I saw the pain that people were experiencing in Flint in the early 1980s, the depressed workers and former managers, the ripple effects on businesses, and the helplessness. It is all much worse now. I don’t know if the U.S. auto industry can be saved.”

None of us knows. But we do know that the binge is over. When a DUI behaves this badly, you take away his license.

Fire all top levels of GM management: Yes or No? Leave us your comment.

–jgoods

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