Driving home points about a cellphone ban
To improve safety, we need to give states incentives to reduce injuries and fatalities, allowing them to choose their own strategies but also allowing the federal government to measure and reward the result. if federal highway money were at stake, you would see better laws and enforcement, and lower fatality rates across the board.
Joshua L. Schank, Washington
The writer is president and chief executive of the Eno Center for Transportation, a transportation policy think tank.
?Talking on a hands-free cellphone shouldn’t distract a driver any more than talking with a passenger. but dialing a number on a cellphone does distract a driver. the driver looks away from the road for too long. and drivers won’t pull over and stop every time they dial a number.
So must we forbid drivers to use cellphones? Or can we find a way they can use phones safely? One way could be using a small keyboard on the steering wheel. Another could be using a hand-held device on which a driver can dial a number by touch without looking away from the road. yet another could be a device that will recognize spoken numbers.
U.S. engineers must get busy and find a way.
Franklin B. Olmsted, La Plata
?Since I’ve never tweeted and hope I never will, I cannot accommodate Dana Milbank’s suggestion in his Dec. 18 column, “an unwelcome message from Uncle Sam,” that readers tweet him at #cellphoneban. I would, however, ask mr. Milbank to be kind enough to give fair warning to us other motorists before he drives again while downloading iTunes, making reservations on OpenTable and partaking in a Post Web chat.
Even drivers in the Granite State aren’t safe — there he found himself “playing a conference call on speakerphone and recording it with my digital recorder while changing the destination on my GPS.” Good grief.
Joel Kawer, Gaithersburg
?The National Transportation Safety Board’s proposal to ban drivers from using hand-held or even remote communication devices sounds like an attempt at Prohibition II.
While I appreciate the idealism of the plan, such a law, if enacted, would succeed only in creating a huge class of illegal activity and a burden that law enforcement departments could never manage. It would also contribute to road hostility, as those who obey the law would see so many others disregarding it. Plus, there’s the matter of where and how drivers would pull over to make or receive calls in compliance with such a law. How dangerous would that be?
Thus, noble in its goal of promoting safety, the net effect of banning vehicle communications might be its opposite.
Salvatore Palatucci, Herndon
?I was happy to see a reader rise to the defense of freedom in a Dec. 18 letter to the editor. I join him in longing for the day when we can “rid ourselves of these arrogant Big Brother liberals who want to prohibit everyday activities” such as typing on smartphones while we careen down the highways.
I find the fact that these statist busybodies can prohibit my favorite driving behavior — preparing and consuming salt-rimmed tumblers of strong margaritas on my way to work — a reprehensible infringement of the liberties guaranteed by the Founding Fathers.
Kerry Snow, College Park
