Published 15 April 2005

(word count: 750)

Wife Mary remarked on the mourning Mom on the morning news who demanded that cell phones in cars be outlawed because a cell phone-yakking driver had run her son down.  "They'll have to ban radios and CDs and triple whip mocha hazelnut caffè lattes," she scoffed, "because those things distract drivers too."

She didn't literally say that, of course.  (This is an exercise in creative writing.)  And, mind you, she wasn't begrudging the woman's grief either, just questioning her judgment.  Why hadn't Mom lashed out at the driver himself, Mary mused, instead of his cell phone?  Because, as all us thoughtful and attentive libertarians know, years of propaganda by product liability lawyers and their enabling judges have programmed people to buy the idea that inanimate objects – especially those produced by big corporations with bottomless billfolds – are the sources of all of society's ills.  Cigarettes make us smoke.  Guns, not people, shoot people.  Drugs force us to take drugs.  Evil spam email coerces us into clicking on porn sites against our wills.  Movies and rap music and video games cause us to be violent (as though violence never existed before "Kill Bill" and Eminem and Grand Theft Auto).

If we can just criminalize all the world's "stuff" we'll be saved.

"What about women staring into their rear view mirrors while layering lipstick on their lips at lickety-split speeds?" I offered.  "We'll have to set up random roadblocks and sic the eye shadow-sniffing schnauzers on 'em to put a stop to it."

"I've seen men shaving on their way to work," Mary rejoined.  Yep.  And reading newspapers.  And blowing their noses.  And knotting their neckties and talking to their carpool cohorts and swatting flies and lip-locking their lovers and brushing their bicuspids and daydreaming and dozing and punching buttons on their PDAs and …

And what?  According to the American Automobile Association Foundation for Traffic Safety, cell phoning while steering ranks number eight on a list of driver distraction-induced vehicular mishaps.  Yet it seems to be number one in everyone's minds.  Except …

"Except that nothing could be more distracting than a pair of preschool back-seaters screaming at the top of their squawk boxes on their way to day care," added my wife in poetic license-speak.

Well, no, actually there is something more distracting than disobedient diaper-dwellers.  According to a study by the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, the number one distraction for drivers is "seeing something outside the vehicle."

Signs.  Bicyclists.  Signs.  Pedestrians.  Signs.  Other cars.  Kids chasing balls into the street.  Dogs chasing cats into the street.  Signs.  Babes in bikini shorts.  Shirtless Hunks.  Babes chasing shirtless hunks into the streets.  Signs, signs and signs ...

One sure way to stop drivers from being distracted by stuff outside their automobiles is to prohibit all stuff outside their automobiles.  (If we can just criminalize all the world's "stuff " we'll be saved.)  Since enforcement of such a ban would seem to entail the detonation of weapons of mass destruction, the masses are unlikely to vote for it.  The only other practical implementation would be to blacken all car windows, a solution fraught with its own obvious difficulties.

Still, driveling while driving is an observable problem, even if not the apocalyptic sort that so many seem to say it is.  The aforesaid UNC study further affirms, "284,000 distracted drivers are involved in serious crashes each year.  But cell phone use was on the bottom of the list of distractions."

On the bottom of the list?  Why, then, all this fuss over phones in the family flivver?  Because (a) cell phones are relatively new and growing in popularity, and (b) cell phone usage while driving is highly observable.

So ignore the studies.  Cell phoning while vehicling is dangerous based on empirical evidence alone.  Glance up from reading this for a second and look out your car window.  See the bloke in the blue Blazer drifting dangerously into your lane?  He's chewing the fat on his phone and not paying attention.  See the granny in the green Grand Am right in front of you, plodding along at 20 MPH, with a phone forced against her hearing aid?  And never a cop when you need one.

This is where citizen action comes in.  Report these people and get them off our highways!  Grab your cell phone and dial …

Oops.  Forgot.  Cell phoning from your car is illegal.

(If we can just criminalize all the world's  "stuff" we'll be saved.)