States should ban all driver use of cell phones and other portable electronic devices, except in emergencies, the National Transportation Board said Tuesday.There's no question that texting while driving is foolish and you shouldn't do it. I believe most states already ban that. In California you can't use a hand-held cellphone while driving (though everyone does it), but you can still use hands-free devices. Banning all cellphone use by drivers is foolish. People won't stop using them, and the accident rate will be completely unaffected. This is a classic government overreaction to a problem that exists largely in their own minds.
The recommendation, unanimously agreed to by the five-member board, applies to both hands-free and hand-held phones and significantly exceeds any existing state laws restricting texting and cellphone use behind the wheel.
The board made the recommendation in connection with a deadly highway pileup in Missouri last year. The board said the initial collision in the accident near Gray Summit, Mo., was caused by the inattention of a 19 year-old-pickup driver who sent or received 11 texts in the 11 minutes immediately before the crash.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
NTSB Overreacts - Wants to Ban ALL Cellphone Use by Drivers
Hand-held or hands-free, doesn't matter anymore according to the NTSB:
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3 comments:
“Ban the nonemergency use...”
The next time a police officer drives his cruiser up a utility pole, how can we determine the emergency-ness of the cell phone call he was on?
From the NTSB report: The “pickup truck merged from the left to the right lane and struck the rear of the Volvo tractor”. So traffic was moving along in the left lane and the pickup moves to the right lane where traffic is completely stopped. The major impact occured when two school busses slammed into the rear of the pickup truck a few seconds later, crushing the pickup driver. The pickup driver could've very easily NOT been texting and still hit the tractor, as changing lanes into stopped traffic results in accidents all the time. Aren't there better examples the NTSB can pull from to illustrate the dangers of texting and driving than this?
From the NTSB report: The “pickup truck merged from the left to the right lane and struck the rear of the Volvo tractor”. So traffic was moving along in the left lane and the pickup moves to the right lane where traffic is completely stopped. The major impact occured when two school busses slammed into the rear of the pickup truck a few seconds later, crushing the pickup driver. The pickup driver could've very easily NOT been texting and still hit the tractor, as changing lanes into stopped traffic results in accidents all the time. Aren't there better examples the NTSB can pull from to illustrate the dangers of texting and driving than this?
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