Friday, October 12, 2007

What the Cell?



The Insurance Journal recently ran an interesting article talking about the effectiveness of Connecticut's cell phone and driving laws. The gist of the story is that although more people are being ticketed by police for breaking the law, the reason is that even more are completely ignoring (and breaking) the law. (Don't even get me started on the fact that over two dozen bus drivers have been ticketed -- "Ride the bus and leave your negligent death to us.") And of those actually ticketed, less than half are being forced to pay the $100 fine.

Of course, there's talk of the legislature fine tuning the bill, but we all know the problem isn't the ban, it's the enforcement, which has been very weak, at best.

Yes, I know the police have better things to attend to, but when public safety is at risk because someone is more interested in keeping a phone tucked under their ear than paying attention while properly piloting a 2,000-pound hunk of glass and metal moving at 70 mph through a turn on a busy highway, I think it deserves their attention.

Then again, that might require them to put their own phones down first.

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