Cell Phones, Cars, and Guns

Various states have banned drivers from using cell phones. Other states are contemplating similar laws. Proponents of a ban argue that cell phone use in the car is distracting and causes accidents. Opponents ask, what's next? Listening to music, eating, conversing with your passengers? Some people suggest a compromise: it's dialing that's distracting, so let's permit drivers to use their cell phones only if they are wearing a headset or speaker phone.

I find public cell phone shouting so widespread and deplorable that I'm tempted to suggest permitting cell phone use only when driving, and with the windows rolled up. But I digress...

I don't think there's any reasonable debate that punching numbers into a tiny keyboard while trying to operate a motor vehicle will cause more accidents. Let's accept for the moment that it does. The more interesting question, I think, is whether talking on a cell phone, even with a headset, ear piece, or speakerphone, is sufficiently distracting to cause more accidents.

There's something about using a cell phone that suppresses people's awareness of their environments. Not all users, but certainly a significant percentage. How else to explain cell phone shouting? A diner sits in a restaurant, murmuring to his dinner companion in a tone carefully modulated to match the surrounding ambiance, and the moment the cell phone rings and is brought to his ear, he's shouting as though oblivious to the presence of anyone else in the room -- as indeed, he suddenly is.

A global experiment has been conducted, and the results are in: cell phone use dissociates the user from awareness of her environment. I don't know what could be more obvious, or less controversial. And if there were a drug that dissociated the user from awareness of her environment, surely we would ban its use during the operation of motor vehicles and heavy equipment.

But here's where we come to the heart of the matter. No doubt, cell phone use in the car will cause more accidents. Equally doubtless, it is enjoyable and economically productive. The first has to be balanced against the second. I don't have any data, but let's start with an extreme example to illustrate the point: if cell phone use caused ten additional road deaths per year but added $10 billion to GNP, would opponents still want to ban it?

Maybe. It's an uncomfortable thing, assigning a dollar value to human life.

I'm in Texas now. In many stretches along Interstate 10 from El Paso to San Antonio, the speed limit is 80 miles per hour. If you've taken this drive, you'll know that 80 mph can seem agonizingly slow. I'm told there's a proposal in Texas to boost the speed limit to 85 mph. Opponents argue this would increase the number of accidents and deaths. I'm certain that it would. I'm equally certain that lowering the speed limit to 45 mph would save lives. Why aren't opponents of the faster speed limit agitating for a still slower one?

Because, like all of us, they don't like to admit that in crafting laws we must always be mindful at some level of the dollar value of a human life.

All reasonable people care about human life. All reasonable people care about the economy. Where we draw the balance is what separates us. But acknowledging the existence of that balancing act might bring us together.

Before someone tells me that every human life is sacred and can never be measured in dollar terms, let's do a quick thought experiment. To use my previous, extreme example: if each life lost to highway cell phone use added one billion dollars to the GNP, how many lives might then be saved with that additional money?

One more thought about cell phones:

It's clear that use of a cell phone induces behaviors that otherwise would not be expressed. Absent a bad row, people don't spontaneously begin shouting in restaurants and other public places. The cell phone might not be the cause of the rude behavior as such, but it is certainly the behavior's catalyst.

Now let's think about firearms. What's that saying? "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." Let's try putting it another way: "Cell phones don't cause public shouting, people cause public shouting."

I own firearms and enjoy using them. My views on the subject are complex. But watching (and being forced to listen) to people using their cell phones, I can't deny that there are tools the use of which dramatically alter the behavior of the user. In other words, certain tools cause people to do things they otherwise wouldn't do. We therefore ought to be open to the possibility that the ability to simply pull a trigger might induce behaviors that a knife or stick or garrote would not. That wouldn't be the end of the conversation, only its beginning. Still, I'd like to think it's worth talking about.

Hopefully without any shouting.