Your car is your castle? Please.
A Senate debate in Olympia over whether to impose a $101 fine on drivers caught holding cell phones when pulled over for driving infractions led one senator to raise the “big brother” flag.
“It’s your car, it’s your castle,” Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, said in an Associated Press article. “It’s big brother coming to rescue you your car from yourself.”
No, it is government trying to rescue us from those drivers who refuse to get the “hang up and drive” message. It’s government trying to save us from people who would willingly risk our lives for the opportunity to multi-task on our streets – as if steering, reading road signs and changing lanes were not enough of a challenge on our clogged roadways. The Senate was right to support the proposed legislation, which has the approval of the Washington State Patrol.
It should come as no shock that drivers who talk on their phones while navigating our roads are far more likely to get into crashes than those who don’t. One study claimed that 85 percent of cell phone users admit to regularly talking on the phone while driving. With tens of millions of cell phones out there, that should concern us. We balk at stories – and our own eyewitness accounts – of drivers who shave, read the newspaper or apply makeup while zooming down I-5. When was talking on the cell phone dropped from that list?
Sen. Joyce Mulliken, R-Ephrata, didn’t favor the bill at first. Micromanaging from Olympia doesn’t appeal to her, she said, but this issue is out of control. We agree. Blame it on irresponsible drivers, not government, for forcing the rest of us to choose between the evils of micromanaging and multi-tasking.
Your car is not your castle. It’s a ton, or more, of metal and glass hurtling past the rest of us at 60 to 80 mph. And we’d like to make it back to our real castles alive.
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