Bill banning cell phone use by teen drivers passes Calif. Senate
By Gary Richards
Mercury News
San Jose Mercury News
Article Launched:04/26/2007 02:26:50 PM PDT
A bill to ban cell phone use and text messaging by drivers younger than 18 passed the California Senate today and will now go to the Assembly for a hearing this summer.
"I introduced this bill for one simple reason - it will save lives," said Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, author of SB33 that passed by a 21-14 vote, in a news release.
"No one would argue that just because we can't eliminate all the distractions affecting driver safety, we shouldn't eliminate the ones we can. This is especially true when it comes to young drivers."
The bill would go into effect on July 1, 2008, and would ban drivers younger than 18 from using cell phones or other mobile-service devices including walkie-talkies, pagers, two-way messaging devices and PDAs while driving, even with a hands-free device.
Violators would be assessed a $20 fine for the first offense, and a $50 fine for subsequent offenses. But no violation point would go on the driver's record.
According to a 2001 report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 16-year-old drivers have a crash rate three times higher than that of 17 year olds, five times greater than 18 year olds and almost 10 times greater than drivers ages 30 to 59.
Similar laws already exist in 13 states and the District of Columbia and similar legislation is pending in 16 other states.
Simitian authored SB1613 last year, which requires California drivers using cell phones to use a hands-free device. That law will go into effect on July 1, 2008.
Click on http://www.senate.ca.gov for more information on SB33.
The BikeForums Team
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I am generally underwhelmed by this kind of legislation. It may feel good, but come on, you might as well make it illegal to be stupid or distracted.
THE leading causes of vehicular crashes (for all ages) are poor judgment and inattentiveness. Poor judgement and inattentiveness pretty much describes most people below 30. If Sen. Joe wants to save lives he should propose a testing scheme that evaluates prospective drivers on a battery of tests focusing on judgement and the ability to focus on important tasks for reasonable periods of time. The testing could be offered as young as 14-15 and be done at each license renewal until 30, then resume again at about age 65 if driving records are otherwise clean.
It won't happen, but there's your root cause and the solution to a wide variety of social ills. There is a significant percentage of the population that should never be licensed to operate a motor vehicle; ever. There are folks rolling around with the effective driving skills of a drunk with a 1.0 BAC; but as long as they are "sober" (whatever that means in their world) and aren't breaking some other traffic law when they run you down, they are free to return to the flow of traffic.
Make it illegal to license the cognitively impared or those with attention deficit behaviors and not only will thousands of lives be saved, but decent public transportation might become economically feasible.
If you've spent any amount of time driving anywhere in the US, you know I'm right, particularly if you've ever been licensed to drive in someplace like Germany or Sweden.
tehdely
Make it illegal to license the cognitively impared or those with attention deficit behaviors and not only will thousands of lives be saved, but decent public transportation might become economically feasible.
The problem is that we live in a nation where the typical civilian life depends on an automobile. Living car free requires a certain determination that most people don't have. Driving is a necessity, therefore we have a system that is overly permissive in terms of who it allows to drive. Telling those with lesser IQs or attention disorders that they can't drive is basically consigning them to living in a select few places in a very specific way.
I have a rather extreme case of attention deficit and this was one of the factors that went into my decision to be car-free right after I started Driver's Ed. I simply cannot focus on all of the different inputs involved in driving a car, and almost caused several accidents even with an instructor around. I threw away my learner's permit and resigned myself to never drive.
However, I have also lived in center cities since I was 14 and am pretty much unequipped to live anywhere else. I'd love to reverse suburbanization, but I don't have any illusions that it's possible, at least until some major factor changes that makes driving unbearably inconvenient (oil crash maybe?).
WalterMitty
{snip}
I'd love to reverse suburbanization, but I don't have any illusions that it's possible, at least until some major factor changes that makes driving unbearably inconvenient (oil crash maybe?).
One major factor that (could) make driving unbearably inconvenient would be the inability to easily get a drivers' license, an inability to register a car without one, and no way to insure it (read:get a loan to buy one) until the license was in hand.
It's kind of a Chicken-and-Egg situation. Is dependence on the automobile a consequence of almost universal access to driving privileges that then influence lifestyle decisions, or did the lifestyle decisions result in dependence on automobiles? (If I haven't screwed up the wording of the question) I'll propose that people that drive cars created the suburbs, not the other way around.
Any effort to crash a commodity market (like oil) in the name of social engineering would be unacceptable on many, many levels. If the oil market crashed on its own, the economic hardship and misery would far overshadow the issue of traffic safety. On the other hand, tightening up licensing requirements could be phased in over time and where needed and wouldn't directly or immediately result in hardship for the vast majority of the population.
We hear about many draconian measures activists wish to take to control Urban Sprawl, Global Warming, conservation of resources, et al, ad nauseum as it relates to automobiles. But who, at either end of the political spectrum, would feel compelled to argue vigorously that a high-traffic density state (like CA, NJ, etc) shouldn't tighten up their licensing requirements in the name of Public Safety?
Certainly, there's a point where increased difficulty in getting an operators license would become ornerous and counter-productive, but I would be shocked to find many that think a drivers lisence is hard to get (or keep) in any of the 50 states.
I think ratcheting up the licensing requirements is the path to solving numerous problems; and laws prohibiting the *things* that people do with poor judgement or attention span problems is just plain silly. What's up next? Driving while eating a sandwich? Anybody want to argue that cell phones "cause" accidents any more than CD players or MP3 players do?
Certainly, to your point, some groups would predictably be impacted first: the young or immature, the elderly, and some with bona fide debilitating conditions (e.g. A.D.D.) cognitive disorders and the like. But I think this base would be a good start on improved public transportation rather than confining them to limited areas; as today is actually the case. And I don't think these people (and society at large) are better served by licensing them and putting them into cars.