An eighteen-year-old driver with a seventeen-year-old passenger crashed into a tree, killing the passenger. On Facebook, the driver had a nickname, which here I will revise to “Wing Boy.” The fatal accident was reported in the online version of a regional newspaper. At the end of the article was a space for “Reader Comments.” The first post was: “I would like to nominate Wing Boy for loser of the year. Who’s with me?” Later comments touched on Wing Boy’s employment history, past girl friends, and ethnicity. Several people tried to intervene with messages such as, “These comments are in violation of anything decent or human,” but these efforts to shut down the verbal brawl only increased the number, insensitivity, and irrelevance of the comments.

A teen died while driving a BMW. One reader posted a comment about “how irresponsible it is for parents to entrust a teen with a BMW,” because doing so “is just asking for trouble.” Dozens chimed in to agree.

Two teens, brother and sister, died in a collision with a truck. The online Reader Comments included: “It is hard to sympathize with these parents. Robby [fictitious name] had his license suspended last year. His parents should stop trying to act cool.” This article drew 357 comments, most of them indictments of the teen driver who died and his now-childless parents.

One of the newsfeeds I get every so often is from the Safe Roads Coalition, www.saferoads4teens.org, which collects news articles from across the country on teen driver fatalities. As Reader Comments following online news articles have become common, a clear pattern has emerged within the articles on teen driver fatailites: many readers are oblivious to the human pain that is at the heart of the article, and use the Comment spaces to condemn the driver and/or the parents, which sets off a furious debate among the other commenters about human decency. A few misguided folks think that the Reader Comment space is the place to express their condolences to the family (“My heart goes out…”).

I have now seen enough of these to draw some firm conclusions: First, nothing good comes of Reader Comment sections on fatal or serious teen driver crashes. The comments are not cautionary tales that will make safer teen drivers or more informed parents. The Comment sections only invite people who don’t know and don’t care to post truly insensitive and egregious messages, or for teens to use the forum for revenge, bullying, and other statements typical of those who have very little perspective. These comments certainly have nothing to with the journalistic mantra of “the readers right to know,” and they are certainly not the place for the community to send condolences to the families involved. It is also apparent that the “Report any abuse” feature of Comment spaces is useless.

My recommendation: if, God forbid, there is a fatal or serious crash in your community and an online news article appears, as quickly as possible, call the paper’s staff and ask them not to allow online Reader Comments, or to retract a Comment space if already posted. Explain to them what happens with such spaces. Send them a link to this post. If a lower-level employee rebuffs your request with “It’s our policy” or “We can’t make exceptions, ” ask to speak to the editor, tell him or her that this is a matter of basic human decency. If the paper refuses, then post your own comment making it clear that in a tragic teen driver situation, denigrating comments about those who have died or been injured, or about their parents are way, way out of bounds.

On September 21, U.S. Transportation Secretary Raymond LaHood will convene a second national summit meeting about distracted driving, which now accounts for an estimated 6,000 deaths and 500,000 injuries annually. The experts will gather while auto manufacturers roll out their 2011 models, many of which will feature a new wave of collaboration with the electronics industry that is certain to create more distractions for more drivers: dashboard-mounted computer screens with Internet access, and enhanced video, audio, telephone, and navigation systems. The Secretary and his guests will focus primarily on how our laws can keep pace with this rapidly-changing technology.

Distracted driving, of course, has been a problem since the invention of the automobile, but in the past few years, cell phones and text messaging have multiplied the problem. Researchers now identify three types of distracted driving: visual (eyes off the road), manual (hands off the wheel), and cognitive (mind off safe operation). Hand-held cell phones are demonstrably dangerous, but text messaging has emerged as the most notorious because it involves all three distractions, makes a crash 23 times more likely, and is practiced by two-thirds of 18 to 24-year-old and 20 percent of all drivers.

Our primary response to the relatively sudden emergence of cell phone and texting distractions has been to pass state laws (motor vehicle laws generally being the province of the states) that try to define, and then limit or ban, these actions. Thus, we now have an inconsistent, nationwide patchwork of rules. At present, nine states ban hand-held phones, and 32 states prohibit texting, but among these states, the variations are huge: Some laws simply address cell phones, while others target “electronic devices” or “mobile” or “wireless” equipment. Still others outlaw “hand-held communications.” Among the rest, we find attempts to describe and limit emails, voice mails, instant messages, iPods, MP-3 players, pagers, personal digital assistants, DVDs, and GPSs. Some states even distinguish between factory-installed and plugged-in devices. Meanwhile, many states exempt navigation systems from their bans, and most important, very few have definitions that cover computers installed in the dashboard.

In two ways, this current focus on cell phones and texting is misdirected. First, these are hardly the only distractions: a recent study conducted by NHTSA documented risks that have nothing to do with electronics: reaching for an object, swatting an insect, focusing on something or someone off road, reading a billboard, personal grooming or hygiene, adjusting a mirror, or attending to a passenger. Second, our laws simply cannot keep pace with the ever-evolving collaborations of automakers and electronics companies – and it is folly even to try.

We need an approach to distracted driving that acknowledges these realities. Our focus should be on the driver’s failure to pay attention, not the reason for the distraction. We need a uniform, national standard. The upcoming summit should recognize that attempts to write laws that keep pace with the type of device from which drivers receive email, voice mail, texts, data, music, or video is nearly impossible. And it matters not to a relative or friend killed or injured by a distracted driver that the diversion was a Smartphone App delivering baseball scores, an attractive person on a street corner, a pop-up ad for a clothing sale, or reaching into the back seat to change what the kids are watching.

We would do better to champion state legislatures adopting a uniform law that would say something like (oversimplified here to make the point): “It shall be unlawful for the driver of any motor vehicle in motion to engage in any activity that takes the driver’s eyes off the road, hands off the wheel, or attention from operating the vehicle in a safe manner.” If every state adopted a prohibition of this type, changes in technology like the imminent introduction of computers would become irrelevant, and every driver in every state would have a common standard. Law enforcement officers would be spared from trying to determine whether the particular electronics in the car they have just stopped are covered by their state’s laws.

Congress can help, by using its power to withhold federal highway funds to push states to adopt a uniform law on distracted driving.

Those who will convene in Washington should consider that this public safety threat, which on average kills 16 people per day and injures 1,400, requires a uniform focus on drivers paying attention, not the ever-changing sources that distract them.