Making everyone into criminals is fun isn’t it?
The National Safety Council is pushing for a universal ban on cellphone use for drivers.
I hate to break it to them, but thats not going to work.
I grew up in New York, the first state to ban cellphone use by drivers. It didn’t work. It just meant that drivers had to get a headset, buy a cellphone with a speakerphone option, or master the fine art of lowering your phone as you pass by an officer of the law.
This is a true waste of our police officers and courts time. Driving is dangerous, it seems that talking on a cellphone does increase that danger, but so does driving in bad weather (even a little rain increases your odds of getting into an accident). Additionally, I’m not sure how they are evaluating the correlation between cellphone use and accidents. Correlation does not always imply causation. Who’s to say the drivers who got into accidents while speaking on their phones weren’t just really bad drivers?
Furthermore, talking on one’s phone while driving is so socially acceptable that I cannot imagine the vast sum of time and money that would be required to stigmatize it to the point where a legal ban could have a substantive impact.
Thankfully there are organizations such as the Governors Highway Safety Association which object to the NSC’s proposed cell ban.
All I can hope for is that this doesn’t grow into a national debate issue. There are too many problems that are bigger than this to consider. Maybe we can table this until some of the real problems have been dealt with.
For now, use some common sense while driving and leave my beloved technology alone.
The Geek Whisperer 