RALEIGH – I’ll go ahead and say what just about everyone else knows to be true: there is no way in the world that the federal government, or state governments acting at their behest, are going to ban driver use of mobile phones.
Do fiddling with buttons and engaging in spirited conversations sometimes contribute to traffic accidents? Yes, although the number of injuries and deaths associated with mobile phone use are often exaggerated.
But mobile phone use is only one of many kinds of distracted driving. Those who lose sight of the road while fumbling with their phones could just as easily lose sight of the road while fumbling with their radios, iPods, change purses, or rambunctious kids.
And those drivers whose attentions wander while talking on the phone could just as easily have their attentions wander while talking to passengers or yelling at rambunctious kids.
(Not that I have a hang-up about rambunctious kids or anything…)
Yes, some traffic accidents are, indeed, attributable to distracted driving. Each injury or fatality is tragic. Each incidence of property loss is costly. But not every problem is amenable to there-ought-to-be-a-law solutions.
It would be neither reasonable nor enforceable to prohibit auto drivers from operating audio-visual equipment, eating a burrito, drinking coffee, or talking to their passengers. Why do the safety zealots believe that cell-phone bans would be any more reasonable or enforceable? Tens of millions of American drivers rely on cell phones in their cars to transact business, coordinate schedules, and conduct their daily affairs. The number of accidents attributable to the misuses or distractions of cell phones is a tiny, tiny percentage of the reasonable and convenient uses of those phones.
To those who say that if a ban saved a single life it would be worth it, I would respond: nonsense. Such a standard may sound compassionate but in reality it is unreasonable, intrusive, and often counterproductive.
Because motorists operate for the most part on public roadways, rather than private property, it can be appropriate for state and local officials to enforce rules designed to protect people from the bad actions of others. But these rules must be designed to confer significant net benefits. The proper standard is benefit compared to cost, not benefit alone.
It is highly likely, for example, that imposing a maximum speed of 25 miles per hour on all roadways in North Carolina would reduce the (already declining) number of traffic fatalities in our state. But we’ll never do it, because it would also dramatically reduce the freedom, productivity, and happiness of North Carolinians.
To justify such an intrusion, there has to be a large-enough gain from regulation to offset the very real costs of enforcing it. Given that the number of deaths nationwide that may be attributed to driver use of cell phones is in the hundreds, and that some of these accidents would still have occurred as the drivers involved manipulated other devices or talked to passengers in the absence of phones, a cell-phone ban would never meet such a cost-benefit test.
None of which is to say that states and localities (the federal government has no legitimate role here) shouldn’t establish more-limited policies, such as driver-safety campaigns and increased penalties for motorists whose distracting driving causes fatalities.
But ban cell phones? No way.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.