Speed and cell phone laws - Self-Inflicted Drag on Productivity

Great Debates
1

The invention of the automobile and the creation of modern high-speed highways were a great stimulus to the nation’s economy, from enhanced productivity and the connection of remote markets to each other. Far less time was wasted with the uncertainty of horse, bicycle or train transportation. I would argue that the low-inflation boom of the 1950’s and 1960’s largely resulted from making the automobile truly useful. Ditto air travel.

LOW SPEED LIMITS

The environmental movement, unofficially kicked off with Earth Day in April 1970 marked a certain guilt that many had with our affluence. There were gains, so to speak but did we deserve them and/or were they worth the cost?

What followed was the National Maximum Speed Limit (“NMSL”) of 55 mph (first 50 as imposed by Nixon). The initial impetus for that was the “energy crisis,” also self-inflicted but the topic for another thread. Parenthetically Nixon had urged a low speed limit for some time before his “excuse” arrived in the form of the Arab Oil Embargo. The NMSL was supposed to be temporary but didn’t end until December 1995. I suspect the real motive was a “hair-shirt” mentality; that self-abnegation may feel good for the soul and for the conscience if not for the economy.

**CELL PHONE USE RESTRICTIONS

**Back in the 1950’s there were “car phones” but they were hard to get and expensive. A story, which may be apocryphal, has Lyndon Johnson envying Sam Rayburn’s (Speaker of the House) having a car phone, and pined for the day when he could call Mr. Rayburn from a car phone, when he could get one. Finally that day arrived and he made the call to Mr. Rayburn. Mr. Rayburn answered and said “hold on a minute, I’m on the other phone.”

Few care to remember the days of the use of payphones when out of the house, or having to ask a business or personal host to “borrow” the phone, incurring message unit or toll charges. Cell phones became ubiquitous by the mid-1990’s and smart phones, in the form of Blackberries, not too long after. The gains in productivity were immense. People could actually work while traveling. They could make or return business calls, set up meetings, and let people know when they were running behind schedule. This, plus other aspects of the high-tech revolution has caused a 1950’s and 1960’s like boom, and also without inflation. Times, except for the 2008-9 sharp recession have been good.

America’s instinct for Puritanical self-doubt and guilt led to a similar “hair-shirt” mentality, followed first by laws against use of hand-held cell phones, which made and make little sense, and then more sensible laws against texting behind the wheel. But the law makes no distinction between texting, hand-held use of a cell phone for talking or changing a music selection, which is much like changing a radio station. Nobody ever discussed restricting car radios back in the day. Maybe people had more cajones then and wouldn’t accept a nanny state.

**CONCLUSION

**Sensible safety laws are fine. But they should be tailored to allow activities that are safe, and not be used for either “feel-good” expiation of guilt, or to fill localities’ coffers.

2

So I take it you don’t believe that distracted driving due to cell phones has caused an increase in accidents?

Well, that or you believe that anybody careless enough to be in an accident due to carelessness (their own or others) deserves to die - and the loss of them and the delaying of people inconvenienced by their accident blocking the road don’t impact societal productivity -somehow.

3

By the same logic we could eliminate bans on drunk driving. Productivity would increase if people spent more time at work, avoiding bars because they could drink on the drive home :dubious:

Many studies have show that drunk driving and cell phone use cause similar numbers of accidents.

4

When cars are all automated, the OP should feel free to farmville his little heart out, but for now he’s arguing for making something inherently risky even more so because freedom. When he’s driving on his own property, I say go nuts, but operating heavy machinery in public is worth regulating for safety.

5

How old are you, and have you ever lived in a major city?

It’s over, so who cares?

People in the 1950s and 1960s were generally fine with drunk drivers running over children. Are you?

Then why don’t you name a safe activity that has a law prohibiting it?

6

I don’t think cellphone laws are due to puritanical guilt. I think it’s due to the fact that if you spend 5 minutes on the road, you’ll encounter some jerk for which these laws apply perfectly.

I’m not talking about some dummy on a cellphone stopped a green light. That’s a minor nuisance. I’m talking about people swerving on highways and rear ending people because their face was in their phone. The former I’ve seen many times, the latter happened to me personally. In my state, the law is simply you cannot have the phone in your hand, not that you can never touch it. I have mine on a mount, never had any problems with cops, and never will, because that’s not against the law.

7

If you get drunk and use a phone, do the driving errors cancel out?

I’d be all for higher speed limits on motorways (freeways?) but not in residential areas.

8

If your phone breaks on an airplane, is it okay to try to repair it? It could be a good way to pass the time, playing with those little wires, and it’s nobody else’s business what you’re doing, so they should just leave you alone.

9

This is ridiculous. Sure, changing the station or putting a new CD in or whatever does distract you- for a few seconds. OTOH one can talk for hours on a cell, hands fee or not. And of course one tries to be hyper attentive during those few seconds.

They have shown that after a few minutes of talking* on a phone your vision become tunneled and you no longer are paying attention, you slow down, and you weave. In many ways you act just like a moderately drunk driver. This doesnt happen if you are talking to a passenger, as they seem to act somewhat as a second set of eyes.

  • so yeah, calling your spouse for 15 seconds to say you are caught in a jam and will be late may be* mostly* kinda safe. Texting is dangerous as fuck.
10

I don’t entirely agree with OP’s take on it, but that’s definitely not the same logic. He is talking about productivity. Getting to where you are going faster or being able to conduct (especially business) phone calls while driving are ways to be more productive. Only in silly, sophistic debate would anyone say it’s productive to be drunk in the same sense.

So not the same logic. But, if there’s a safety penalty for doing something faster or squeezing more activities into the same time period you have to consider that. A better analogy would be the time it takes to rig proper safety lines if you’re working on scaffolding, or more elaborate scaffold with safety rail. That takes time to set up which you could be spent on the job. OTOH people who fall off the scaffolding won’t be productive at all for quite a while if ever again. That’s the balance.

I do partly take the OP’s point in highway speed though. The idea of trying to save gas with speed limits is idiotic. The way to save gas is tax the crap out of it. If you’re not willing to do that, just forget it. The 55mph national limit was a very stupid idea. And famously in Germany there are segments of the highways with no limit for cars. So it’s not a ‘let’s be like Europe thing’ either to have tight speed limits.

The argument in favor of speed limits in reducing accidents is worth hearing IMO, the ‘green’ argument is not. By and large I think current US speed limits, say on Interstates, are relatively sensible for the most part. They are generally higher in areas with longer distances and less traffic, and no longer onerously low (and thus totally ignored like 55mph was) even in the East.

If you can afford a car you should be able to afford a hands free set up for your phone. For those who would quote ‘studies’ saying hands free phone isn’t necessarily a lot less distracting than holding it, well maybe but be realistic: mobile phones exist, people are going to use them in cars, deal with it. If there’s a reasonable argument hands free might reduce the safety issue I think you just allow hands free and leave it at that. Hands free is definitely safer than people manually texting into phones they are holding.

11

Be realistic: alcohol exists, people are going to drink it in cars, deal with it.

12

I think even the most ardent MADD activist would agree that if I stop off at a bar on the way home from work, have two beers, and then drive home, I would be under the legal limit.

So, why does it become illegal if I drink two beers in the car on the way home? Why should it be illegal if my passenger drinks twelve beers on the way to somewhere?

I’m not trying to hijack the thread, but the OP’s point is well-taken. We want to have over the top, ban everything solutions so we can feel good about ourselves instead of only restricting the activities which cause a problem.

If I am on a deserted interstate highway, I think I could operate a cell phone without crashing. That is what these products were originally designed for: car use.

Another example: prescription medication. I have taken a particular drug for twenty years. It was always called in to the pharmacy for six months at a time. Now, due to drug regulations, I have to pick up the written prescription at the doctor’s office every three months. Wasted productivity for both me and the doctor. Because some assholes abuse their medication (and will still abuse it today) I have to be inconvenienced. My having to pick up my prescription is not saving society anything.

13

Well, yes, but

  1. They’d say you shouldn’t be driving in this case anyway (I personally wouldn’t after two beers - legal limit or not), and
  2. They’d say the legal limit is too high (most US states have limits on the high end compared to developed nations).

If their preferred limit is 0 but they are forced for practical reasons to settle for “some”, how in the world is it rational to allow a driver to further impair driving ability while operating a vehicle?

Legal alcohol limits aren’t some kind of challenge to determine the maximum amount of deliberate impairment to impose on yourself. They’re a practical compromise between a no tolerance policy and a realistic consideration that prohibitions on any consumption near a time window involving driving are unrealistic.

Seriously?

A butcher’s knife is designed for cutting meat. I’m rather ok with banning the use of a butcher knife to cut meat while operating a motor vehicle.

14

Also, no, cell phones weren’t designed for car use. That happens to be one of the first common uses, but I’d love to see a cite that cell phones were originally designed to be used in cars.

15

This is all news to me. I thought that the criticism of MADD was that they were neo-prohibitionists and they denied that vehemently. I guess you are spilling the beans here.

I’ve heard that they want the limit lowered. It used to be .15, then .12, then .1, now 0.08 and they want it to be 0.04. However I always thought, and it is still the law that it is not zero tolerance, despite the wishes of some. I may consume alcohol and drive a vehicle so long as I am not impaired. And the legal limits are indeed what I am allowed to be just below.

Do we tell someone driving 65mph in a 70mph zone that the speed limit is really too high and it’s not “some kind of challenge” to see how fast you can go without breaking the law? The limit is 0.08. I can have two beers. Why can’t those beers be in the car?

16

How so? I’m not a member of MADD.

But as far as I know, they’re not prohibitionists. They would love people not to be driving impaired though, and there’s more than some

So what? The wisdom of an action is not tied to its legality. In any event, I offered a rather reasonable justification for barring the active act of imbibing alcohol while driving even if still under the legal limit. You still claim one doesn’t exist.

The legal limit assumes the impairment has already occurred. We, as a society, accept that level as a hard cutoff before somebody steps into a car as long as that person does not become more impaired. Not so for the act of imbibing while driving - we don’t accept somebody becoming more impaired while driving.

Well, yes, we tell people that all the time. This was certainly a part of driver’s education when I was younger (more years ago than I care to recall), and I don’t believe it’s changed since then.

The speed limit, at least in my state (and I imagine all others), is subject to road conditions. In the case it is night time, driving rain, no street lighting, and road paint in need of renewal, a police officer is legally in the clear for stopping that car. In cases when conditions are not optimal, there’s no hard speed limit, but it’s almost certainly not the posted maximum.

“But the speed limit is 70” is not an especially good excuse in this case and I wouldn’t want to bet on the wisdom of it as a legal defense.

Likewise, even if somebody is under the legal limit, they are still (in most if not all states) subject to DUI laws. I imagine you’ll find several examples of people pulled over and arrested for driving in an unsafe manner though still under the legal limit.

Cell phone use while driving is no different. They weren’t originally designed to be used in cars (still would love a cite on that).

17

Let’s say I have a 30 minute drive home. I do one of two things:

  1. Stop at the bar and have two beers, then drive home. My BAC is around 0.037 at the beginning of the drive.

  2. Stop at the convenience store, and buy a six pack. I drink two on the way home. My BAC throughout the drive goes from 0.00 to 0.037 as I am pulling into my driveway.

In scenario #2, my BAC is actually lower when I am exposed to the public, yet #1 is perfectly legal and #2 is illegal. It makes no sense.

18

Probably not.

19

So, you’d rather just not have a law that works in a larger set of typical circumstances (cite: history of the US - open container laws in particular) because it isn’t especially relevant for a smaller number of exceptions?

We call that letting the perfect get in the way of the good. It does make sense. It’s just not perfect.

Tell you what: come up with a system that lets you do just that but can somehow prevent or discourage drivers from driving drunk with greater impunity yet doesn’t notably increase the number of car accidents, injuries, and fatalities (with their consequent effects on my - and everybody else’s - taxes and insurance), and I’m all for it.

Just “get rid of the law - I’ve got mine, who cares about you, your safety, or how much it costs you” doesn’t work. It makes even less sense.

20

But you’re viewing this from the perspective of chemistry, not human behavior. Real people are probably more apt to go to a bar and continue drinking in their car.

I’m not saying that it is totally irrational to consider whether prohibiting drinking in cars is justifiable. But let’s not base the discussion on the ways people don’t act in the real world.