The undercard to David Owen's Chamber of Commerce propaganda Tuesday was Senator Mike Vehle's (R-20/Mitchell) declaration that he'll support a statewide ban on texting and driving:
[Owen] said he didn’t foresee texting and driving coming back to the Legislature, but Vehle spoke up during the luncheon.
“I’m going to bring one to the Legislature,” Vehle said of a texting and driving ban. “I want to start a culture and have it be that you shouldn’t be texting and driving. We did that with seat belts.”
He hopes a texting and driving ban would become a cycle of children first telling parents not to text while driving. Then once the children are able to drive, parents will reinforce the law and tell the children to leave cell phones alone in the car.
“The culture is more important than how many tickets can be written,” Vehle said [Anna Jauhola, "Chamber Chief: Voters Didn't Believe Arguments," Mitchell Daily Republic, 2012.12.12].
That fits what Sen. Vehle said on the campaign trail in October. Fellow Republican Rep. Tona Rozum agrees; she says she'll support any bill Vehle presents during session. And on this issue, I'll support Vehle, too. We need to change the culture. We need to make clear that no text is more important than keeping your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road.
Pat, I know you always have a nanny-state-freak-out over sensible distracted driving rules. But if you could have overcome your grudge and backed Steve Sibson in the District 20 primary, you could have had a real Republican anti-nanny-state crusader representing Mitchell in Pierre.
The challenge of a law like this one has to do with evidence and enforcement in general. We're going to need the equivalent of a breathalizer and a BAC test, Cory. Maybe Stan G. (aka Mr. Science) has some creative ideas. My own tend to run to requiring videos installed in everyone's car and a cop team assigned to watch monitor banks of every driver on the road. Jobs, jobs, jobs, right? Could get a little spendy though. Maybe we could get a little more federal money. Fill the jails with pot and texting addicts and the state coffers with road crime fine money.
But seriously folks, these are addictive behaviors, and I submit that we need to start thinking less in terms of arrest and criminal penalty and more in terms of addiction therapy.
i.e. it's a health care problem, not a crime problem.
p.s. PP, if you're reading this, remember, don't blog and drive, big fella. (A message from the Madville Times Department of Health.)
I would be willing to bet that tonight... this very night, there will be people (more than 10 in Rapid City alone) driving home with a BAC over the legal limit, grabbing an extra 600 calories they don't need in the form of some sub-nutritious high sugar/carbohydrate foodlike substance, eating it with one hand, texting with the other and the speakers so loud, they couldn't hear a horn honk if their lives depended on it. All this after having just lost a half a weeks pay on some type of gambling game or device.
Addicts, not criminals. Health crisis, not crime scene.
It actually is criminal, Bill.
I understand there may be an addiction angle to the problem, Bill. But the addiction angle to drinking and driving doesn't stop us from treating DUI as a criminal matter as well as a health matter. What I appreciate about Sen. Vehle's statement is that he talks about changing the culture. Recognizing that one has an addiction is difficult. Will we make it easier for at least some texters to recognize they have an addiction if we try to use statute not just to issue tickets but to change the conversation about and perceptions of constant e-communication?
One technological solution: Make cell phones not work when they are in motion at more than a certain threshold speed (say, two or three miles an hour, fast walking speed).
Phase-comparison technology can carry this off.
Of course this technology would make it impossible for passengers to text, and also for people to text while on buses, trains, and the like.
However, it might be worth it, if it saves lives. Texting withdrawal might be a bit unpleasant, but it's not dangerous like alcohol withdrawal can be.
And yes, texting is an addiction, fortunately one I do not have; I have never sent nor received a text on a phone in my life.
The police state alternative does not appeal to me at all.
Ah, Stan, I remember this idea of yours! I hate to exclude passengers from that usage, since they pose no danger. What if we put some small conductor in the gas pedal or the driver's seat so that whoever is touching that portion of the car and touching a phone will get an interference pattern that disables the phone?
Might work, Cory. Where there's a will, there's a way. I mean, in a society where 15-year-olds can hack into major government security sites, you'd think we ought to be able to figure out a way to prevent texting while driving without hiring fifty million new cops, or otherwise creating a surveillance society that nobody wants.
You don't need anything like phase comparison tech Stan. They all have GPS engines and do not function at elevation so speed is an easy function.
Easiest scenario though, prosecute the crimes of distracted driving without Vehle's law. This is a copper issue in my book.
Curious, Stan: did DUI laws lead to the hiring of lots more cops?
I will agree with Stan that we shouldn't expand the surveillance society just to make this one law work. Putting this law on the books and enforcing it with existing resources may be enough to drive the culture change Vehle mentions.
Les: do we need DUI laws, or could we just prosecute that crime under distracted driving laws?
My suggestion is that 'existing resources' are being wasted treating symptoms and ignoring the cause. These crimes are a result of our sweeping our mental health and addiction issues under the rug. And our culture enables addiction even as it stigmatizes those suffering from it as somehow of low moral character. People avoid mental health treatment as a result and the consequences are tragic.
In brief, we need to spend less criminalizing and incarcerating the dieases if addiction and depression and spend more diagnosing, treating and curing them.
...because mental health has become a national security issue.
What part of red state collapse escapes you people?
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/article_d27eb3b9-fa2c-5579-8135-6282ba894f6f.html
"He hopes a texting and driving ban would become a cycle of children first telling parents not to text while driving."
Sounds like a big tax-payer funded school campaign is coming.
If you're going to turn children into Ride Along Cops, how about the basics like, "Hey, Dad, don't speed." Or, "Hey, Mom, don't blow through that stop sign."? Maybe the Ride Alongs can video parents' discretions and mail them to Santa who can forward the vid to the police.
Pretty crappy of legislators to involve kids in selling legislation against their parents.
Yesterday, as I swam in the Deadwood Rec Center, dragging my five-day-crud-infected carcass up and down, up and down, up and down, feeding my endorphin addiction, I noticed how many people were fooling around with these little boxes, these little things called smartphones, that play cute little tunes and make cute little pictures and send cute little messages like, "I'm at the Deadwood Rec Center," or "Can you hear me now?"
On the street, a person not aware of the ubiquitous nature of smart phones (or is it stupid phones?), maybe someone from another culture or another planet, might ask, "Why is everyone talking to themselves and scratching their ears?"
Don't get me wrong. I'm no Luddite. In fact I was "texting" via ham radioteletype in the 1970s, designed and built my own wireless modem, and everything. I know how this stuff works. But I also know that an obsession with it takes away from the very act of living one's life.
Now as for the issue at hand, I really don't see how the government can legislate or otherwise force culture changes on people. We have tried that in other countries (through the use of military force, for example in Iraq and Afghanistan) and it does not work. This weird behavior is here to stay, until the general mood or mode of society drifts into some other obsession.
I have suggested some sort of technological solution to the texting-and-driving problem. I think something can be found along that line that might actually work, and won't represent the equivalent of trying to do brain surgery with a baseball bat.
When I drive down the roads, I try as best I can to watch out for people who might veer over the center line and run into me head-on because they are drunk or texting or otherwise distracted. I'm reluctant to even do so much as fiddle with the vehicle's regular radio while driving. You see, I want to be able to walk and talk and swim and see and hear for as long as I can, and not end up as some crushed piece of protoplasm surviving by tube feeding and artificial lungs.
Besides the aforementioned technological fixes, I might suggest that communities take advantage of this behavioral problem to generate revenue. That might involve cameras that could photograph people as they drive by ... I think California is already famous for that sort of stuff.
All of this just makes me want to bug out, to cut myself off from the madness altogether. Maybe Alaska is the place ... at least they are not a moocher state (see Cory's other post). Another alternative, quite the opposite, involves moving to a place where I don't need a car at all, such as the downtown of a big city.
But I digress.
Cory, I don't know if DUI laws resulted in a lot more cops getting hired. I don't think so, but I don't know for sure. I can say this much, however: The Nanny of the State has only so much power to regulate people's behaviors. Beyond that, it's just a waste of energy and resources.
Oh, I might add, a few multi-million dollar lawsuits might spook people a bit too. You know, someone maimed by a texter-driver, and that driver ends up as an indentured servant. Then make sure it gets on The O'Reilly Factor ...
End of rant.
Bill, if addictive behavior and even mental illness are connected to texting to behavior, what are the causes we need to address?
Stan, I recognize that strange phenomenon, the folks at the park walking around staring at these little boxes. I love this blog, and I enjoy communicating with you folks here, but I also hate to ruin a lovely walk in the park by losing myself in a palm-sized screen.
Short overview here, Cory. http://www.powerofthemiddleground.com/page5/files/5023ac453d172a4950b492c49659b877-2.html
Nanny state, law enforcement industry to harass drivers:
http://www.keloland.com/newsdetail.cfm/city-bans-may-prompt-sd-ban-on-texting-and-driving/