Quote:
Originally Posted by Moonliner
I don't think anyone is arguing in favor of distracted driving, but clearly in the vast majority of cases people are able to talk and drive without indecent.
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The first question I would raise on any particular risk is: does it contribute to the utility of driving?
Having passengers in a car obviously does. Increased speed obviously does.
Food and drink not so obviously. Radio not so obviously. Talking with your wife on the phone not so obviously.
I'd say there are two different standards of review for them. If a limit on one of the first sufficiently reduces the benefit of driving it can be argued that it is worth the increased risk of harm and death. I'd argue that the threshold is much higher when the distraction is purely cosmetic to the purpose of driving.
And partly, **** gets grandfathered in that if new today probably wouldn't be allowed.
That said, if the NHTSA statistics are to be believed, compared to the population experiencing all of the existing distractions you already mention, texting while driving increases your risk of an accident by 23x. Speaking on a cell phone (regardless of handsfree or not) increases your risk of an accident by 7x compared tot he population experiencing all of the existing distractions.
Then you add on top of that the research indicating that the cognitive disruption of talking on a cell phone is fundamentally different in nature from the cognitive disruption of kids arguing in the back seat or singing along to the radio and to me it puts talking on your phone squarely into the category of "Doing Stupid ****."
The argument may be that driving with kids should also be "Doing Stupid ****" but because we do one category of "Doing Stupid ****" isn't a great argument for not trying to prevent another type of "Doing Stupid ****" from taking root.
By no means am I one advocating for a zero risk life. But in this case the Doing Stupid **** is almost as likely to hurt someone else as yourself and not Doing Stupid **** causes no real harm to anybody.
So in this case, since driving is already a heavily regulated activity, I have no problem at all with the various state departments of transportation trying to find ways to eliminate this particular form of Doing Stupid ****.
(Plus I have to imagine the rate of cell phone involved accidents is probably a bit underreported since hopefully not too many people would be so stupid as to say "I don't know how I ran into that tree, officer, I was on the phone with my mom and not really paying attention."