Laws to Prevent Cell Phone Use While Driving are a Bad Idea

A number of local governments across North America and around the world are looking at laws or have already passed laws that prevent the use of cellular devices while operating a motor vehicle. There is a lot of people drive on the roads today who are far too focused on their phone conversation and not enough on the road in front of them or the drivers around them. However a law that is aimed at cell phone use does solve the problem. Well, it solves 1 aspect of the problem – cell phones. It doesn’t address the other distractions that drivers engage in. The Ontario government has recognized this and is taking a slightly better approach by banning the use of MP3 players, GPS units, and cell phones. If made into law, you will still be able to use the devices, just not touch them. While this is better it’s still not the right approach. Now, before anyone jumps the gun, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to use these things while driving. I am saying that any law focused on improving the safety of our roads should be aim at anything that takes the drivers attention away from the task at hand. It shouldn’t be limited the technology of today, but at anything the driver gets into while driving.

How many times have you seen someone eat fast food, reading the newspaper or a book, putting on make-up, or even shaving while they are driving? How many times have you seen a driver reaching down to grab something off the floor of the passenger side of the car. Typically this is the result of them dropping said item moments earlier when,they were trying to use it instead of focusing on driving. This is so common that I can’t even count the number of times I’ve seen it. Oh, here’s a great one I saw the other day: the sun visor was down, a GPS unit was mounted directly above the steering wheel on the windshield, and the driver was eating some sort of fast food. Now before we go any further, I want you to really think about this setup. With the sun visor down, the amount of available windshield to see out of, is significantly reduced. Lets add a GPS directly above the steering wheel and you now have just a small amount of space to view the road and cars ahead. But wait, we now need to take at least one hand off the wheel to hold our fast food. This is a tragedy just waiting to happen and the worse part is these new laws do nothing in this case. (Some US states have banned windshield mounting of devices. Unfortunately, not here where I live.)

I do a fair amount of driving each day in both heavy and light traffic and I have seen each of the above and more! What good is a law focused on limiting cell phone use when there are lots of people chowing down on hamburgers and fries? This is just as dangerous as talking on the phone, in my opinion.

It’s great that the government is looking at new laws to help make our roads safer, but the law really needs to have a broad focus and shouldn’t be limited to 1 or 2 technologies. Anything that takes your attention away from the task at hand, driving, should be illegal. It’s plain and simple. We don’t need to create a law each and every time. If we do it right from the start then we won’t need 20 different laws just to say that you shouldn’t be messing around with X, Y, or Z while driving.