Like I Needed Another Reason To Never Want To Call El Paso My Home

July 1st, 2008 by Jake Hatlin | Posted in Talking Policy |

According to the El Paso Times staff, we need to ban driver use of hand held cell phones in Texas, really…really bad.  Polling numbers support their claim, they say, but I think we can all agree on how inaccurate polls can often be.  To me, you can’t leverage this argument on simple poll numbers.  I need more, I need studies, sound data, stuff like that.

As it just so happens, we’re in luck.  The EP Times does quote a Harvard study concluding that cell phone use causes 500,000 car accidents each year, but forgive me if I’m not shaking in my boots.  That’s a nice number, 500K, but it is also nation wide. If you figure that figure to be proportional to population then that places only  36,700 of them in the Lone Star State each year. 

Heck, aren’t that many traffic accidents caused by drivers gawking at the clientele on Congress Avenue?  Does this mean we need to outlaw cross dressing on the corner of 6th as well?  No we don’t, and here’s why.  If you take the number of licensed drivers Texas had in 2004 and give that a modest increase of 10 percent for the past 4 years, then what you get is 1 in 404 licensed drivers in Texas that will cause a traffic accident due to cell phone distraction each year.

Is the term “going after a fly with a baseball bat” coming to anyone else’s mind right about now?

Not only is it not an urgency, but banning driver hand held cell phone use isn’t going to do a darn thing to end driver distraction either.  That is because we are a creature that distracts easily, and there will always be things for us to turn our attention to besides the road in front of us.  So after cell-phones, what is next?  Do we outlaw playing with the radio?  How about shaving an putting on makeup?  What about noisy kids in the back seat, those can be distracting.  What will the government have to say about people in the front seat that drivers engage in conversation with?  That is an act that pulls attention away from the road.

I think (or at least I hope) that you’re getting the picture I’m trying to paint.  Until they design a car with an isolated compartment for the driver - free of any intrusions or distractions what so ever - we’re not going to end traffic accidents arising from attention taken off of the road.  And since placing such ridiculous restrictions on drivers would never happen, why start chipping away at our individual liberties in the first place?

Call me crazy, but it’s my car that I paid for.  If I want to listen to my music at a loud volume, talk to the guy sitting next to me, put on some eye liner while I drive (yes, I do partake in some cross dressing here and there), or pick up the phone and call my folks then so be it.  It’s my choice.

I’m not a fan of traffic accidents but they’re a part of our lives, just like obesity from bad dieting or broken bones from climbing trees.  We choose to live with them because we have the right to make decisions for ourselves, even if those decisions are not 100 percent in our best interests (at least that’s what my doctor said when I told him that pancake syrup was the backbone of my diet). 

I don’t want to live in a society where the government starts taking away my individual liberties because the decisions I make may or may not be in my best interest.  Where is the fun in that?  And I hope you feel the same. 

But if you don’t and you still want to go after cell phone drivers with pitch forks because you feel threatened by them, then start taking the bus.  Because the only person who is going to be hurt when a BMW slams into the side of that bus because the driver was too busy talking on the phone to notice it will be the sorority princess behind the wheel of her daddy’s car.

And no one really feels that much sympathy for her anyways.