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                                                         Drivers often can be seen chatting on their cell phones, and that puts them and others at considerable risk, experts say. 

More than one out of every four traffic crashes — or roughly 1.6 million annually — involves a chitchatting or texting person sitting behind the wheel, according to a recent report released by the National Safety Council. This inattention kills thousands every year, by some estimates. It injures hundreds of thousands more.

The risk is obvious by now, as study after study makes clear. Yet drivers keep dialing up danger.

View full sizeRob Bennett / New York TimesThe Ohio legislature on Wednesday passed a bill that will outlaw texting while driving.So what will it take for people to stop? The solution won’t come in one easy-to-implement act, like hitting send on a text and expecting the message to get through. Instead, advocates for change foresee a uniting of approaches — public awareness campaigns, legislation and technology — to reshape behavior.

It can happen. It has happened.

Rewind a few decades, and drunken driving raised few eyebrows. Stumbling out of a bar with car key in hand brought little more than a wink and a nod after an offer of one more for the road. Inebriated drivers poured onto the streets without care. But outrage grew with the death toll, and a grass-roots movement emerged out of anger and sadness.

Today, driving under the influence carries a stigma because of the work of organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Their message remolded public perception.

View full sizeKen Marshall, The Plain Dealer

Ohio’s executive director of MADD, Doug Scoles, sees “very close parallels” between the early stages of the drunken driving and cell phone campaigns.

“You’re making a whole paradigm shift,” Scoles said. “You’re trying to make the accepted unacceptable.”

MADD framed the need for reform with heartbreaking tales of lives needlessly snuffed out by poor-yet-correctable behavior. It made the problem real in the public consciousness, Scoles said. The personal stories gave life to statistics and institutional studies.

“Without those voices,” Scoles said, “you have nothing.”

Today, pained voices are beginning to talk about cell phones. A group called FocusDriven, modeled after MADD, formed late last year to illustrate the dangers of distracted driving and promote nationwide change. Members recently shared their stories of loss with Oprah Winfrey on her afternoon show.

Judy Riter of North Royalton watched that day. Afterward, she took Oprah’s “No Phone Zone” pledge to not use her cell phone while driving. Studies show that motorists on the phone are four times as likely to be involved in a crash as drivers who aren’t yakking it up. That’s the same danger level presented by drunken drivers.

“Nothing I’d be talking about is worth risking someone’s life,” said Riter, 66.

Opinion polls show that people are increasingly agreeable to rules forcing them to hang up on the dangerous habit and that they’d follow them. Government seems happy to oblige.

States continue to consider and pass laws to restrict cell phone use in the driver’s seat. Twenty states plus the District of Columbia currently outlaw texting while driving. The Ohio House passed a bill on Wednesday that would do the same. Six states and D.C. prohibit motorists from pressing a hand-held cell phone to their ear.

An out-and-out ban on drivers using any cell phone, including a hands-free system, has yet to be attempted by a state, according to Anne Teigen, a transportation specialist with the National Conference of State Legislatures.

But that’s viewed by some as the all-important next step in an incremental process.

The reason is simple. It’s the on-the-phone conversation by motorists — not the act of holding a few ounces of plastic — that creates what’s called “inattention blindness,” said David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah and a leading researcher and authority in the field of distracted driving.

Drivers engrossed in conversation often stop processing what’s right in front of them and drive erratically. That makes switching from a hand-held phone to a hands-free system the equivalent of giving up vodka for Scotch to avoid getting drunk, Strayer said. It doesn’t solve the problem.

What can? Ironically, the answer may involve what started this whole mess.

Technology.

Several companies, such as ZoomSafer and obdEdge, offer gadgets that block calling and texting and effectively muzzle a cell phone in a traveling vehicle. Incoming callers either are routed directly to voice mail or hear a message explaining that the phone’s owner is busy driving. Outgoing calls can be nixed, too. (Exceptions can be made for 9-1-1 or other designated digits.)

The movement-detection systems can operate off a phone’s GPS signal or electronic devices in the car that communicate with the phone. In essence, it’s a tool to protect us from ourselves, said Don Powers, a managing partner at obdEdge.

An increasing number of corporations sign up for the service to keep on-the-road employees off the phone and minimize potential liability, Powers said. (Court cases have resulted in multi-million damage awards for traffic deaths related to cell phone use.) Parents use the technology, too, to rein in phone use by their young drivers.

“We’re hooked on the technology,” Powers said. “It’s hard — very, very hard — to give up.”

That’s why some believe a forced breakup is the only way to cut the connection between drivers and their phones. It’s an addiction at this point, and the majority of people will not willingly give up the constant communication they crave in a fast-paced world, said Robert Foss of the Highway Research Center at the University of North Carolina.

“It has to be taken away,” Foss said. “That’s the only way we’re going to get where we need to be.”

In the meantime, more and more people try to break the habit on their own.

Dom Cellitti of Bratenahl said he stopped texting and driving and minimized his phone use after seeing the movie “Seven Pounds” starring Will Smith. In it, Smith’s character kills seven people in a car crash after looking down at his cell phone while driving. Cellitti called the message haunting and said it made him feel stupid for the risks he took.

“It shook me,” said Cellitti, 44. “I thought to myself, ‘I can’t do this anymore. It’s not worth it.’ ”