Enforce the law on cell-phone use

5/6/07
If the goal is to change people’s behavior, it’s not working. Try driving on any stretch of road in Connecticut and it becomes clear people haven’t given up their handheld cell phones behind the wheel. Whatever the reason, be it force of habit or lax enforcement, the 18-month-old statute has not ended the scourge of gabbing drivers.
Whether it makes sense to legislate common sense is by now beside the point — the Legislature went after cell phones, and now they need better enforcement. Some proposals call for increasing the fine from $100 to $250 to increase the deterrent factor. Criminal justice experts can debate that one, but it seems unlikely that’s the problem. The law received plenty of publicity, and it’s unlikely anyone would hesitate to press the "answer" button based on a fine they probably won’t have to pay. There simply aren’t enough police officers to keep track of all the infringements, and everyone knows it.
So another school of thought has it that the fines should be lowered, thereby making it more likely that police will hand out the fines. The thinking is that if officers think, consciously or not, that a fine is out of line with an infraction, they will be less likely to issue a citation. It’s why making jaywalking a capital offense wouldn’t keep people in the crosswalk — police are people, too, and know when a punishment doesn’t fit the crime.
By lowering the fine, theoretically, more tickets of $50 would make a larger impact than fewer, larger fines, and thereby word would spread that the police are on the lookout. It makes a certain amount of sense, but still runs into the enforcement issue. Callers who drive are still not likely to get caught.
Distracted drivers are a real problem on our roads, and the problem shouldn’t be taken lightly. But it’s not just cell phones — eating, listening to music or talking to someone else in the car can all divide a driver’s attention. And with thousands of people dying every year on our roads, it makes sense to tackle the problems that we can, rather than leaving it all up to random fate. A bad driver puts much more than himself at risk.
But we also have to know our limits. We can’t legislate ourselves to safety, but we can encourage common sense. A good place to start would be telling people to hang up altogether, because hands-free devices present their own dangers. But the best solution is to crack down on enforcement and issue more tickets — the more people slapped with a fine could be that many more safe drivers.