Like everyone, I'm infuriated by drivers who talk and text on their cellphones. But banning hand-helds isn't the answer.
It's hard to be a Libertarian with all of these knuckleheads around.
I'm not really a card-carrying member of the Libertarian club. I pay taxes; I even think they're a good idea. Still, I find myself instinctively bothered by this incessant nanny-state desire to pass laws to tell people how to behave. Then those instincts run smack dab into those idiotic drivers text messaging while behind the wheel. It makes you wonder: If they're that stupid, maybe they do need a law to tell them what to do. And while we're at it, let's ban hand-held cellphones as well. That's the proposal now before the Massachusetts Legislature.
One chilly Saturday last month, I spent a half-hour on a Copley Square street corner, watching traffic pass by. All told, I counted 468 cars; 42 drivers had phones to their ears. Those weren't the ones that scared me, however. I saw several drivers animatedly engaged in conversation with a passenger, turning their heads, gesticulating wildly. One woman was stretching both arms wide, as if to show the size of a fish she had caught. A man, hands off the wheel, was putting on sunglasses.
The phenomenon I observed is called "driver distraction." Cellphones are part of that, but how much is uncertain. A 2001 University of North Carolina study concluded cellphones were the distracting factor in crashes only 1.5 percent of the time. The National Conference of State Legislatures came to a similar conclusion. California, for example, found cellphones contributed to no more than 611 crashes out of 491,083 during a six-month period in 2002. On the other hand, a much-ballyhooed 2003 study from the University of Utah said cellphone users drove as badly as drunks, while a 2005 pilot study of 100 drivers in the Washington, D.C., area came to the startling conclusion that driver distraction caused almost 80 percent of all crashes (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration believes it's more like 25 percent), with cellphones a major contributor. There's a big problem with these inflated estimates. If there were that many new "drunks" on the road, or if cellphones were a significant cause of driver distraction, one would expect to see that reflected in accident statistics. But crash rates nationwide, in fact, have been dropping even as cellphone use has increased, from 26.6 in 1997 for every 10 million miles traveled down to 19.8 in 2006.
Still, even if they don't cause a lot of crashes, cellphones and text messaging do appear to contribute at least to some, such as the horrific accident in December in which a boy was killed in Taunton by a text-messaging driver. So, again, why not a ban? Bans are needed, runs the argument, because people on their own don't know what to do. We look to the law to tell us what's right and wrong.
Really? Despite it being a crime, 40 percent of Americans 12 and older have tried marijuana, according to a 2003 survey. I'd bet that all of us, at one time or another, have exceeded the speed limit. Then there's New York's experience. It banned hand-helds in 2001. Yet, while use of the phones dropped a bit the following year, it then climbed back up to pre-ban levels, according to the NHTSA. In other words, just because we make something illegal, that doesn't mean we stop doing it. Activists counter that tougher laws are the cause of a decline in drunken driving, but, really, those laws more reflect a sea change in our culture. Where once being inebriated and behind the wheel was a joke (remember Dean Martin?), today it would garner few laughs.
The point is that the law is a clumsy and ineffective tool for trying to make us better people. Most of life - driving included - requires good judgment. A law can't provide you that. Moreover, cellphone bans have a feel-good, do-nothing quality to them. Researchers have concluded there is little difference in the distracting effects of handheld phones and hand-free phones, yet the Massachusetts legislation (and the laws of every state with a ban) would permit hands-free calling. And even with a ban, we'd still have drivers fiddling with their radios or eating a Big Mac while merging onto the highway. How do we deal with those? More laws? Enlightenment philosophers long ago argued that compelling people to be religious wouldn't save their souls. In the same way, I suspect, merely banning hand-helds and text messaging would do little to make even the most knuckleheaded of drivers more responsible.
Originally published in The Boston Globe Magazine, March 23, 2008.