Hands off (III)

Over a year ago a California law went into effect wherein it became a punishable offense to talk on a cell phone while driving without a so-called "hands-free" device. (I mentioned it in this post last year.)  In other words, one was not permitted to hold a cell phone in one's hand while driving; one had to employ a Bluetooth earpiece or something that allowed one (in theory) to keep both hands on the wheel.

At the beginning of this year the law was extended (or maybe it was a separate but related law) to prevent texting while driving, which closed an obvious loophole with the first law.

In the months since the "hands-free" law went into effect I have witnessed many, many motorists blithely ignoring the law, with one hand pressed up to the side of the head while they breezed along streets and freeways.  I'm not sure whether they were somehow oblivious to the new rules or merely were unconcerned with the penalty; perhaps they doubted that the police would bother to enforce it (having much bigger problems here in the metropolitan L.A. area, or that it would be difficult for police to see definitively while traveling at high speeds, or that if they spotted a cop they could just hang up quickly and deny everything. 

The only certainty (from my extraordinarily limited and anecdotal research):  The law wasn't having much of an effect in changing the behavior in the minds of those who most needed to be affected. 

Presumably the idea behind the law was that holding a phone was distracting, but clearly these people didn't agree about that.

And to be fair, I must concur.  It's not holding a phone that's distracting.

Many years ago, long before the law was even under consideration, I had an incident where I was driving along a somewhat poorly lit side street and my cell phone rang.  I answered it because I figured it would be a short conversation, just to answer a question for the friend who called.  And although the call didn't last very long, I did realize at one point that I drove through a stop sign at an intersection.  This wasn't until I'd gone through it, of course, and there was no problem caused by this, as there was no car coming from the perpendicular street, but nonetheless I'd flat-out missed it.  I could argue that the intersection should have been better lit, but I can only blame myself for not paying better attention.

The thing is:  Having one hand off the wheel made no difference.  I was distracted by the act of talking to someone who was not in the car with me.  I could have taken both hands off the wheel and steered with my knees and still noticed the stop sign if I wasn't splitting my focus between the tasks of driving and conversing on the phone.

And since then I have held a strict policy of not using the phone while the car's moving.  I was lucky that time, and there's nothing I have to say to anyone that's important enough to have to test that luck again.

Maybe there are others who are better at such multi-tasking, but I think it's more a matter that there are many who simply have been lucky that others were paying attention.  As a pedestrian I've had several incidents where a driver on a phone came barreling out of a driveway and I've stayed out of the way, even though I had the right-of-way; being in the right doesn't do much good against several tons of steel and glass.

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To be fair: I did once see someone get a citation for breaking this law.  The person was sitting at a stop light in downtown L.A., with the phone up to the ear nearest the window.  An officer on a motorcycle pulled up between lanes and tapped on the window and pointed to the curb.  I will admit that seeing that gave me a bit more pleasure in that moment than is justified, but looking back it was not so much a triumph of behavioral engineering but the ensnaring of an idiot.  The law got someone who was too stupid to be paying attention,  too stupid to think that putting the phone up to the ear toward the interior of the vehicle would at least be less obvious.

I'm sure it's possible that there have been other citations I haven't seen, and there may be some who are genuinely dissuaded from using their phones with the law in place, but the trouble is that the law doesn't address the real issue: some people are inconsiderate, crappy drivers; using a phone certainly exacerbates that, but it doesn't initiate what's wrong.

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And of course, I know that the way the universe works, were I to make even a slight exception and use the phone for just a moment, I would be the one the cop would cite.

Maybe the key to avoiding getting caught breaking minor laws (such as the "hands-free" cell phone usage while driving) is to be unconcerned with getting caught.  One would not act suspiciously, and perhaps what draws attention from law enforcement most of all is the appearance of something to elicit suspicion.

If one cannot be genuinely oblivious, one should develop the ability to not give a crap.

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In any case, the law cannot forbid what it needs to address—namely, that people are stupid.  It may not be that all people are stupid all the time, and it's likely that all people are stupid at least some of the time, but stupidity at the time is the key.  What we seek is a world without stupidity (in theory), but that's not going to happen.

What would we have to rant about then?

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Clearly I am offering my own small contribution to the stupidity of the world with this little rant.