Declarations

No Single Answer

“Distracted driving is a serious problem and in our increasingly mobile world, it is becoming the norm. As we have seen with other motor safety issues such as seatbelt use and drunk driving, there is no single answer to addressing the problem of distracted driving.”

—Robert Passmore, senior director of personal lines for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI), in response to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) call for a national ban on cell phone use while driving.

Catching the Texting

“We actually have to catch the person texting. … So, it’s a deal of you look over and are they dialing the phone? Are they actually texting? There’s no way of really determining that.”

—Sgt. Bruce Qualls, supervisor of Muncie, Ind., police’s traffic division. In its first five months, Indiana’s texting-while-driving ban has led to only a few dozen citations by state troopers. AP

A Voluntary Practice

“It’s pretty much voluntary at this point. … There’s not anybody who comes around and looks at instruction practices.”

—John Olson, science specialist with the Minnesota Department of Education, says there are neither state codes nor state-level auditing for classroom science demonstrations. In a Maple Grove, Minn., middle school, four students were burned when a teacher poured a small amount of methanol, or wood alcohol, into a 5-gallon plastic jug and ignited the fumes, causing a fire larger than expected. AP