ESSAY: That cell phone ban

Cell phone law will generate revenue, have little impact on highway death rate

By ANTHONY GREGORY | Sunday, July 6, 2008 12:16 AM PDT ∞

Ever use a phone headset while driving? It's distracting. You might find yourself precariously steering with your left knee while positioning the plug into the jack, dialing with one hand and steadying the earpiece with the other.

God help you if you're using a clutch. Such madness is and will remain perfectly legal in California, because it's "hands-free" ---- a fitting term for such acrobatics. Driving while talking on the cell phone the old-fashioned way, however, is punishable by a $97 fine since July 1.

Do those gizmos really make driving while gabbing safer?

Studies done by the New England Journal of Medicine (1997), the National Safety Council (2001), the University of Utah (2003), the Swedish National Road Administration (2003), the Canadian Automobile Association for Traffic Safety (2004), the British Medical Journal (2005) and Carnegie Mellon University (2008) indicate there's little, if any, difference.

In 2003, the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis estimated that there were 2,600 annual phone-related road deaths nationwide. The California Highway Patrol counted only six phone-related traffic fatalities statewide in 2006 ---- out of over 4,000.

How many more people crashed because they were sleepy, angry, ill, talking to a passenger, eating or dialing the radio? Do we need laws against such distractions, too?

The Public Policy Institute of California considers the CHP figure way too low: it estimates the new headset rule could save 300 lives statewide annually, based on declining accident rates in states with similar laws.

But crediting the trend to the law assumes general compliance. Yet people still break drunk-driving and drug laws as much as ever, despite increasingly draconian penalties that make a $97 fine look like a joke.

Fatal traffic accidents are a horrifying epidemic. They claim 42,000 American lives yearly and one out of 50 deaths worldwide. This leading cause of death far surpasses terrorism, illegal drugs and crime combined.

If phone use is a major factor, why the wrist-slap? (On the other hand, 1.1 million foreigners died on roads last year, including in dozens of countries with cell phone restrictions, many stricter than the California law.)

The analogy between driving on the phone and drunk driving is overblown, but consider: After Clinton lowered the blood alcohol limit in 2000, police spent much more time stopping, arresting and processing lighter drinkers at the cost of catching heavier ones.

This might be why "from 2000 to 2003, drunk-driving deaths began to inch upward again, after two decades of decline," argued Radley Balko in The Washington Times in 2005. Instead of reducing reckless driving, strict driving-under-the-influence laws can miss the point. These cell phone tickets will only waste more police time.

But they'll bring in revenue ---- the real motivation behind many traffic laws.

Consider red-light cameras. In Los Angeles, about 80 percent of red-light camera tickets go to drivers making rolling right turns. Meanwhile, Dallas and other cities are rethinking the cameras altogether: When they successfully discourage drivers from running red lights, they bring in less ticket revenue. Can't have that.

Perverse incentives explain why, aside from proposing more fines, cops and privacy invasions, politicians never really confront the unacceptable traffic death toll.

When cracked paint or tainted spinach hurts just a few, public activists and politicians loudly demand investigations and new regulations. When 42,000 Americans die on government roads, it is mostly ignored. But if a business produced nearly so many dead customers, it would be seen as a conclusive indictment of capitalism.

People understandably hold government to especially low standards, but why not consider private and community ownership of roads? Half the roads in 19th-century America were not built by tax-and-spend government.

With government out of the way, road rules would still be standardized to cultural norms, but the market would set particular safety policies. Business owners would have to provide safe roads while avoiding costly, counterproductive practices that alienate their clientele.

Most important, Americans would not accept nearly as many deaths on private roads as they now assume as a fact of life on government roads.

Such a proposal is radical, but California's 4,000 annual road deaths demand a dramatically different approach.

All this new law promises is a boost to the headset industry.

Anthony Gregory is a research analyst at the Oakland-based Independent Institute.

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