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 The Chronicle welcomes you online! Please feel free to respond to these editorials or letters to the editor by sending your letters to the editor.

We condense letters; most, as published, won't exceed 300 words. A letter must include the writer's name and city, which will be published, and an address and telephone number for verification, which will not be published. Writers may be limited to one letter every 30 days. Open letters, letters to third parties and poetry are not considered. Letters from people living outside the Chronicle's circulation area usually are not considered.

Seeks law on car cell phone use

Web posted January 27, 2000

 Have a thought? Go to the @ugusta Forums.

Editor, The Chronicle

Your Jan. 19 editorial defended the use of cell phones while driving. Your supporting arguments included pervasiveness (so many people already have them), harmlessness (most cars just weave), and progress (new cars will have hands-free devices which should solve the problem).

I suspect you underestimate the problem caused by car phones. A study printed in The New England Journal of Medicine showed that the risk of getting in an accident increases 400 percent when using a wireless phone while driving. Furthermore, that study found that hands-free devices had the same risk as the handheld devices. Another study found that it wasn't just the conversation that was distracting drivers. Forty-two percent of all phone-related accidents were also caused when drivers were startled by the phone's ringing or dropped the phone when answering it.

I would accept your argument of the widespread use of car phones if I also thought a law was unenforceable. But Georgia Sen. Mike Egan's proposal is enforceable just as recent seatbelt and child restraint laws have been effectively implemented.

Finally, I question the validity of accepting the trade-off between convenience and lives. The usefulness of not having to pull off the road to talk doesn't justify the loss of even a single life.

Susan Kinney, Waynesboro