HB 546 would ban cell phone use in your vehicle while driving. But is that the actual problem? Up until we had Ray LaHood the phone-o-phobe running the NHTSA from the department of Transportation most of the data indicated that talking on a cell phone was no less dangerous than having a conversation in the vehicle with another person. As of this writing, you can’t find that data anymore. In fact the NHTSA and the government have a dedicated web site to distracted driving that highlights cell phones as a major cause of driver distraction and even Oprah is in on the action, but that tidbit appears to be missing.
Suspicious? You should be.
Looking at the large picture cell phones have become the bogeyman equivalent of CO2. The Democrats and their green $pecial intere$t friend$ say CO2 is making the planet hotter but despite there being millions more tons of it about it hasn’t gotten warmer. It has gotten cooler. And rich liberals keep buying up expensive ocean front property despite dire warnings of rising sea-levels. Insurance scam or hypocrisy?
So what’s the deal with cell phones?
The number of phones in service has exploded to the point where there are almost as many in use as there are people to use them. So there are far more of them in use, and in use in vehicles, so by all accounts we should see an increase in distractions, collisions and deaths.
We see exactly the opposite.
There has been a decades long decreases with collisions and fatalities at historic lows despite more vehicles, drivers, and miles traveled. And since 2008 we have managed to keep fatalities under 40,000 per year, which seemed like an impossible dream. The numbers have declined with recent estimates approaching the mid thirty-thousand range. (Or maybe the Department of Labor is calculating these statistics now?)
Fewer collisions, and fewer deaths despite adding millions of cell phones into the population?
We could just as easily argue that by redirecting all the other common driving distractions to the use of cell phones we managed to prevent 800,000 collisions and save over 10,000 lives.
But no one is looking at those statistics. Cell phones have become the obvious scape-goat, a high profile observation for what appears to be a declining problem. A torches and pitchforks moment where the mob-ocracy chases down a “monster.”
Banning cell phones is a nanny-state, look what I did mom, act performed by shallow uninterested legislators who are more interested in the appearance of doing something memorable with their political careers rather than something necessary and useful.
HB546 will not help unless you also ban conversation, passengers, eating, smoking, adjusting the heater or radio, moving your mirrors, looking at scenery or just about everything else that a human being does or that can happen in the passenger compartment of a motor vehicle.
It also ignores reality. The three things that cause the most vehicle accidents and deaths today are the same things that caused them 30 years ago–speeding, alcohol, and teenagers.
But we are not about to ban teenage drivers, even if it is their number one cause of death and represents a huge imbalance in the cost of life and public safety resources to deal with the collisions and tragedies. With speed and alcohol still major factors in the teenage crash statistics relationship.
So we don’t need another do-gooder bill like HB 546. We need a systematic change in the driving culture. But that’s not necessarily something I would want my legislature to attempt. So rather than turn police officers into a broader revenue stream by passing some pointless bill, why not just try educating the public instead? It seems to have worked for seat belts in NH, it can work for cell phones as well.
Cross Posted:
http://granitegrok.com/blog/2011/02/dont_ban_my_cell_phone.html
http://www.nhinsider.com/steve-mac-donald/2011/2/23/dont-ban-my-cell-phone-ban-teenage-drivers-instead.html
The hearing for SB 150 is today at 9 AM. 
You can probably think of a list of things you need a photo ID for but if you live in New Hampshire voting is not one of them. 
But down south in Massachusetts, with one flamboyant stroke of a pen, Deval Patrick has mandated that all public employees have equal access to same, regardless of sexual identity or expression. (Public schools are full of government employees. How’s that going to work exactly? –Democrats don’t think that far ahead.)
Monday, February 21, 2011 at 07:24AM
The New Hampshire House Judiciary Committee has come out against 
Former Merrimack Town councilor Mike Malzone has decided he has had enough. What tipped him over the edge? An 11 pm town meeting decision to implement pay as you throw after just about everyone had gone home.
Being a New Hampshire democrat means never having to denounce anything. This only matters because the liberal-progressive whip holders who direct traffic leftward around the democrat’s rotary-of-hypocrisy like to tap the hair trigger on their own media Weapons of Mass Outrage (WMO) whenever they can manufacture the provocation. So if someone to the right of them puts together a sentence that could in any way be misinterpreted as racist, misogynist, bigoted and so on they create outrage, then pitch it to anyone who will listen.
You can probably guess who voted against HB 474. Democrats. In fact not one single Democrat voted for it. But they are not beholden to the unions. Nah.
The New Media Militia 