Legislating Common Sense For the FAIL

California, in an attempt to legislate common sense, instituted a law banning the use of a cell phone while driving unless a hands free device was used. The fine for a first offense is $20, additional offenses are $50 each. From what I've seen around town, the law has done absolutely nothing to change people's idiotic and totally self-absorbed behavior. They continue to blather away on their phones while drifting from lane to lane on the highway in their mega-SUV (they are invariably alone too).

The thing is, the law is already pretty clearly covered by laws against reckless driving. Reckless driving is when you are driving your vehicle in a negligent and dangerous manner. Studies have clearly shown that people on cellphones drive as bad OR WORSE than drunk drivers. Their attention is limited, their ability to react is severely impacted and they make themselves a far more dangerous road hazard than not gabbing away on their phone.

My recommendation is to either remove the law altogether and just start enforcing the existing laws against reckless driving or give the cell phone ban law some real teeth. Nobody cares about a piddly $20 fine. Make the first fine $50, the second $100 and add $100 to each subsequent fine. If someone's facing a $400 fine just for talking on their phone while driving, they might think twice about it. Probably not but maybe.

Side note, reckless as a word to describe dangerous driving is nearly the same as wreckless, meaning not having a wreck. Odd.

Death by Texting

It comes as no surprise to me that the incidence of testing related injuries is rising rapidly. No, not sore thumbs, more like people spraining ankles, falling off bikes and even being hit by cars. All while their attention is focused not on the road or where they are but on the little screen with the little letters on it.

Techdirt has this, ER Doctors Warn About Walking While Texting; When Will We Start Seeing Laws? And I'd probably respond, pretty damned quick. Lawmakers love to try and legislate common sense (seatbelt laws, handsfree phone in the car laws, etc) but you can't really force people to not be idiots. Sure, they'll get a ticket every now and again but the underlying problem hasn't gone away.

The trouble is that our lives are so busy from start of the day through to the end that it is hard for people to actually stop and focus on one thing for more than a moment. We are conditioned to multi-task because life demands it. We eat while driving, we take care of our kids while driving, we do so many things at once that it feels almost natural to just toss one more activity on top of it all.

But if you're frantically texting while crossing a street then there's a reasonable chance you won't make it to the other side. And is it really so very critically important that you read and respond to your texts that immediately or maybe it can wait until you're not standing in the way of multi-ton vehicles bearing down at you? I'd hope the latter but apparently that isn't always the case.