April is distracted driving awareness month, and state law enforcement is celebrating in the best possible way.
In an effort to combat unsafe driving practices, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and California Highway Patrol have been cracking down on cell phone usage behind the wheel for the last three weeks.
According to a CHP press release, officers are “committed to ticketing” anyone handling their phone behind the wheel, and plan on educating motorists about how dangerous distracted driving is.
I cannot think of a better allocation of time and resources. The CHP is acting to keep us safe in an entirely fair and justified manner. No controversy, just service to the people.
The ban on texting or other phone use while driving should be one law that we can all get behind. I have mixed feelings about speed limits, provisional licenses, age profiling, and plenty of other road laws, but when it comes to bringing attention away from glowing rectangles and back to the road I’m all for stricter law enforcement.
It seems that every age has its own form of self destruction. In the early 1960s, for example, cigarette consumption peaked at about 4000 cigarettes per capita per year, but has since fallen by nearly 40 percent.
Our age isn’t killing itself with tobacco, it’s doing it with cellphones behind the wheel.
In 2010 there were 387,000 injuries and 3,331 deaths associated with distracted driving in the US. There is no reason those numbers can’t fall just as tobacco consumption did, and with more actions such as this CHP crackdown, that could become a reality sooner than later.
The incentive to pay attention that a threat of a massive ticket yields is, for better or for worse, more effective in the real world than any educational program or common logic ever will be.
When I pull over to send a text message, my friends automatically assume it’s to avoid getting a ticket, not to save their lives. The CHP is wisely tapping in on this mentality of my generation to minimize crashes. At the end of the day that’s what we should really care about.
Law enforcement always claim that the main purpose of their job is keeping the rest of us safe. While some tolerance policies do more harm than good to society, the cell phone crackdown really is a glowing example of the “to protect and serve” mentality.
Take the social host ordinance in Twin Cities, which ensures that even if a minor calls the cops on their own party to help themselves, they still get a citation. Here the incentive to be safe is muddled by the looming threat of financial hardship, and we all end up back at square one.
This cell phone crackdown isn’t deserving of protest or objection because it doesn’t include that kind of down side. It just prevents dangerous crashes.
I commend the CHP for taking practical action to work towards eliminating this danger, and hope that our local law enforcement can make this attitude towards cell phones a permanent part of their departments.
For once, this is a police crackdown I’m 100 percent behind.
