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As of July 1, 2008 (yeah, I’m a little behind on this) it was made illegal to talk on your cell phone while driving.  You can read the entire text by clicking here.  

 

This law drives me insane.  It just doesn’t make sense.  I’m not really sure what they’re going for with it.  I can and will agree that distractions while driving is unsafe, but I’m not sure this law alleviates the danger.

 

So lets look at what you can do…

• Pick the phone up to dial
• Hold the phone, while not using it, up to your ear
• Talk to your passenger
• Hold your phone and talk to your passenger
• Do all the sorts of things you normally do in your car…as demonstrated in this video I found through Jerads blog(thanks Jerad)

 

 
Now forgive the conspiracy talk, but this law is just a prime example of politics being politics.  Here’s how I imagined it happened… It began with the cellphony company who went to a nice politician at told him how to get some notoriety and support from the media and voters.  ”Propose a law that looks like it benefits everyones safety, make it illegal to talk on your hand-held phone while your driving.”  Because everyone thinks they are safe and responsible drivers and it’s everyone else that’s the crazy driver, especially when they’re talking and not paying attention to the road.  So it gains the support of the media and responsible citizen, oh and of course the blue-tooth headset makers.  Any politician would be crazy to vote against, it would be almost political suicide, how can you be against something like that?

 

The phone companies make a bit of profit, the state and cities making a bit of duh from the tickets,  the politicians looks like they’re making the world a bit safer, people have feeling of safetly….all the while giving the government a bit more of a reach into our personal lives.  

 

It just seems all a bit unnecessary. Does it make the roads any safer? I’m just not sure.  This whole thing seems a bit frivolous.  I still haven’t bought one of those fancy head-sets yet, but they probably wouldn’t work too well with all the wind in the jeep.  Oh well…  

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 5:09 pm and is filed under rantings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.