Cell ban lacks teeth

On July 1, a law banning California drivers from having a conversation on a hand-held phone will go into effect. The law will have two big side effects: It will increase sales of Bluetooth technology and illustrate how sadly ineffective our state government is.

The law was signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger almost two years ago, but apparently Californians needed some time to get used to the idea before it became official.

So how can you avoid breaking the new law?

For those of us over the age of 18, don’t hold the phone while you’re having a conversation. You can feel free to hold it while you’re dialing a number or taking a call, Mike Marando, a spokesman for the Department of Motor Vehicles, told the L.A. Times recently.

After that, drivers will need to make use of their speaker phone or Bluetooth headset.

You can also feel free to hold your cell phone while you’re text messaging.

That’s right, while it will be illegal to hold the phone and have a verbal conversation, the law is silent about text messaging.

As anyone who has driven around Westwood knows, driving and talking on a cell phone is nowhere near as popular or frightening as driving while texting is. At least people who are talking on their cell phones generally have their eyes on the road, not on their incoming messages.

The author of the bill, state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, told the L.A. Times, “I didn’t want to risk the whole bill by pushing one step too far,” when asked why text messaging was not included in the ban.

To be fair to Simitian, it was quite a struggle to get the bill passed, taking him several years, due in part to lobbying on behalf of cell phone service providers such as Sprint.

This is a sad testament to the efficacy of our state government ““ the only way Simitian could get a bill passed was if he didn’t give it any teeth.

For instance, according to MSNBC.com, studies conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have found that it’s the conversation that distracts drivers and makes them more likely to have an accident ““ not whether they’re holding a phone to their ear or using a headset.

Of course, a whole range of dangerous behaviors was ignored when the bill was written. It’s still legal to apply makeup, do your hair, eat a sandwich and even make a sandwich while behind the wheel. A year ago, while I was inching down the 405 during rush hour, I passed a woman with a book spread out on her steering wheel, engrossed in a novel.

Of course, as a CHP spokesman told the L.A. Times, the way the state deals with these other driving distractions is by issuing citations for the results ““ such as swerving into the wrong lane or failing to notice a stop sign.

If that method is good enough for everything else, it doesn’t make sense why handheld cell phone use received special treatment by the legislature.

It could be a manifestation of society’s apprehension about new technologies. After all, what makes fiddling with the radio any more or less distracting than cradling a phone to my ear?

Maybe it’s an attempt to look busy. Since no one admits to the police at an accident scene that they rear-ended the car in front of them because they were distracted by their cell phone, reliable data is difficult to gather on the impact cell phone use has on accident rates. But I’m sure this won’t stop our elected representatives from reminding us how they saved our lives and deserve our votes in the next election.

Whatever the reason, there’s no doubt that legislation such as this is a total waste of time and money. The government should have undertaken a useful project, such as figuring out a way to accurately study which driver distractions are the most dangerous, and then drafting legislation to ban those behaviors.

Instead we have a cell phone ban that still lets you text message ““ and the ban will probably be poorly obeyed, especially considering that the first infraction only results in a $20 ticket and does not impact your insurance rates.

The next time I’m driving to work and there’s nothing on the radio and I’ve already finished eating my drive-through breakfast, I’m going to give my state representative a call to let him know how upset I am about the way he wastes my tax money on ineffective legislation.

On speaker phone of course.

Do you practice yoga while commuting? Tell Strickland about it at kstrickland@media.ucla.edu.

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