Talk about making sausages! The Grand Forks City Council has once again put the ban on texting and driving back into committee. It’s been almost exactly two months since this thing came up in the safety committee at Council President Hal Gershman‘s request. Given the reaction by a lot of people, it seems like a no brainer. So why is it going back to the drawing board again?
Because the council thinks that the law doesn’t do enough. They think there are more things that drivers shouldn’t be able to do while behind the wheels, like talking on the cell phone or reading a newspaper, because they’re also distracting.
I actually cursed out loud when Council member Curt Kreun told me about banning driving and talking on the cell phone. He said what he’s thinking is maybe requiring those geeky headsets. My reaction made him chuckle.
Well, blast it man, they did that in Washington state and, when I came home to visit and heard about it, I thought, “What a bunch of public safety fascists. Sure glad I’m in North Dakota.” So now I’m think, “What the [smurf], Grand Forks?”
To be fair, there is some basis for thinking that talking on the phone and driving does impair your driving skills somewhat. Like texting and driving, however, the stats aren’t very clear because cops don’t put that sort of thing on their accident reports. So, researchers have used test subjects on driving simulators or extrapolated from available data. There’s some research that suggests headsets lower the risk. I don’t think anyone’s trying to exaggerate the danger.
However, I’m starting to have my doubts about these studies over all. The number of distractions that drivers now face have only gone up since the 1990s with cell phones and iPods and digital cameras joining radios, lunch and various other distractions. Supposedly then we should see a massive increase in accidents. We are not. We should see a massive increase in fatalities. We are not.
I took the liberty of looking up some of this data. The number of crashes and the number of crashes that lead to fatalities per person in this country has dropped significantly since the early 1990s. In fact, the absolute number of crashes have dropped so it appears that more drivers have taken care to avoid accidents than before.
Of course, as a news guy, I’m all too aware that good news whispers while bad news screams and, consequently, gets more attention.
As long as I can keep my two dogs on my lap while I drive I’ll concede to do the headset thing to read my emails
Joe, don’t forget you need to have your collection of stuffed animals in the back window of your car, or your collection of VFW Trucker hats lined up across there also.