Use of Thumbs Confounds Use of Sense

From The New York Times:

By CLYDE HABERMAN
Published: August 31, 2009
People who text while driving are routinely accused of posing as grave a danger to themselves and to others as people who drive when they are plastered. This may qualify as a slur against drunks. Studies like one done by the University of Utah show that, if anything, texters behind the wheel are greater menaces.

Many New Yorkers thus found reason to cheer a few days ago. Gov. David A. Paterson signed legislation that, beginning Nov. 1, will make it illegal in New York — as it is in more than a dozen other states — for anyone to drive and text, be it on a cellphone, BlackBerry or any other portable electronic gizmo.

If any law may be described as a no-brainer, this one is it. You have to be certifiable to think that you can stare at a small screen and thumb-type on a tiny keyboard for five or six seconds while going 65 miles an hour, and not be a potential threat to everyone in your path. In the opinion of many safety experts, self-deluding multitaskers have had their way long enough. It’s time for some multi-tsking to rein them in.

Whether the New York law will do that is a question. It doesn’t throw the book at texters so much as it tosses a few pages in their direction.

The maximum penalty is a fine of $150. That’s a far cry from the no-nonsense approach taken by Utah. There, a texting driver can get as much as a $750 fine and three months in jail; if injury or death is involved, the penalties can go as high as a $10,000 fine and 15 years in prison.

Also, New York’s texting ban will receive what is known as “secondary” enforcement. In other words, unlike the situation with an offense labeled “primary,” a fine may be imposed only if the police find some other violation, like speeding or running a red light.

“There’s a feeling among some that secondary enforcement is O.K.,” said Judith Lee Stone, the president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, which is based in Washington and describes itself as an alliance of consumer and health groups and insurance companies. “But secondary enforcement is not O.K., and there’s no reason for it.”

Assemblyman David F. Gantt, a Democrat from Rochester who was a sponsor of this legislation, defended its penalties. “How much tougher do we want to make it?” he said. “I’d hate to put someone in jail when we’re not sure if they were texting or not.” It does not mean that primary enforcement has been ruled out forever, Mr. Gantt added. “Believe me, we’re taking a look at it,” he said.

SOME in Albany say, not without reason, that it isn’t easy to prove that a driver has texted illicitly without another offense taking place. It is probably harder for a police officer to spot a texter than it is to catch someone yakking on a cellphone at the wheel. And we all know how spotty the enforcement of existing bans on cellphone use are.

That said, it is often a struggle in car-worshipping America to convince state or federal lawmakers that certain restrictions imposed on drivers are sensible, even essential. “The attitude we see in legislatures is that some people are really just not interested in having government in their faces,” Ms. Stone said. “They say, ‘What’s next?’ ”

In this regard, New York is no exception. Tough tactics in the name of auto safety tend to come slowly.

Until four years ago, drunken drivers who killed people in crashes were able to avoid vehicular manslaughter charges unless a secondary factor like speeding could be proved. Death and injury aside, drunken drivers infrequently land behind bars in New York State. Of the 27,660 such drivers who were found guilty last year, only 1,124, or 4 percent, went to prison or to jail, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services.

The ban on cellphone use while driving is watered down. It applies only to hand-held phones. Never mind the research that shows how talking on hands-free devices can be as much of a potentially lethal distraction.

Even the New York law requiring seat belts in cars evolved slowly. Like the new ban on texting, it initially received secondary enforcement. In time, it was elevated to primary status.

By now, seat-belt requirements are second nature to New Yorkers, as they are everywhere in this country except New Hampshire, which does not impose a seat-belt mandate on anyone over 18.

It must be that “Live Free or Die” spirit, no?

“Live free and die, I’d say,” Ms. Stone said.