Let’s just say I won’t be slapping a “Hang Up and Drive” sticker on my car anytime soon.
This isn’t a politically correct disclosure, but I am nowhere near ready to give up talking on the phone from my car.
Chatting while driving isn’t something I do often. Still, it won’t be easy when a new state law forces me to give it up. At least there’s time to get used to the idea.
I didn’t think much about it when Gov. Chris Gregoire signed two measures into law May 11. A text-messaging ban will take effect Jan. 1. The law banning cell phone use without a hands-free device will be enforced starting in July 2008.
Both will be secondary offenses, meaning police won’t pull you over for just talking. You’ll have to commit some other traffic offense. Fines will be $101.
Drivers will be able to call to report illegal activity or if they need emergency help. I don’t imagine calling my mom while mired in gridlock will ever be considered a dire situation.
I do know that everywhere I go, I see drivers holding phones to their ears. It’s like we’re in purgatory. We know punishment is coming, yet we’re unwilling to give up our wrongdoing.
Either we’re not ready to hang up, or we don’t believe we’re doing something wrong – or dangerous. And driving while talking can be dangerous.
When Gregoire signed the bill, at her side were Cindy Baker-Williams and her 12-year-old son, Billy. The boy had been injured in a car-pedestrian accident. According to the Associated Press, the mother said crash witnesses saw the driver on a cell phone.
State Sen. Tracey Eide, one of the bill’s sponsors, cited a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that likened driving while on a cell phone to being legally intoxicated.
It’s dangerous, but is it more dangerous than using a hands-free device?
A 2005 study by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration researchers, reported by CNN and The Detroit News, found that voice-activated dialing led to longer dialing times. The focus expected from keeping hands on the wheel was offset by the delay.
Is talking more dangerous than, say, ripping a wrapper off a straw and sticking the straw in a fast-food cup’s plastic cover as you pull out of the drive-through? Is it more dangerous than having an argument with somebody in the passenger seat?
We may find that compliance is like trying to put a genie back in a bottle. Car time is now communication time, not only for friends and families but for work. Are we ready to be less productive?
I recently saw a TV news report on the nation’s last state without a mandatory seat-belt law for adults. It’s New Hampshire, where folks cherish its “Live Free or Die” state motto. I always wear seat belts, but part of me admires an unwillingness to regulate behavior of otherwise law-abiding adults.
We’re told that people who don’t wear seat belts boost health costs. If it’s true of them, it’s also true of obese people with a penchant for Big Macs. Should laws control them?
Maybe not, but cell phone talkers endanger those around them. Yes, and mountain climbers endanger rescuers needed to save them in a pinch.
Silly comparisons, I know. What’s not silly is wondering about the wisdom of a law that will seriously inconvenience many people.
Is it a good law? Or merely a feel-good law?
I’d prefer education to legislation. Dial while stopped and pay attention. I liked a 2006 proposal by state Rep. John McCoy, the Tulalip Democrat. It wouldn’t have allowed cell phone use by teens in their first six months of driving.
Meanwhile, let me tell you about an accident I had. It was just after my husband died. I hadn’t been drinking. I wasn’t on the phone, blasting the radio, or speeding. I spaced out, I guess.
Anyway, I rear-ended a truck. Driving while distracted – that’s what ought to be outlawed.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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