Obama Administration Calls For National Ban On Cell Phones While Driving

Exactly!!! I encounter these idiots on the road all the time, and it has nothing to do with the use of a cell phone while driving. If all cell phone use is banned, these (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)s will still be the greatest danger on the road.

 

If talking hands free on the phone is to be banned on the grounds that it creates a distraction while driving, what is to be made of talking to the passengers in the car?

 

So you're an Obama supporter now?

 

It is my opinion that the redundant, layering of seperate an unique Preemptive Rule* laws are more about the Pigovian revenue stream garnered through fines....
than actually "protecting" anyone....(Big Insurance being the exception, in this case )

As Harry Ried himself admitted, "There is not a bill we can pass to cause people to have common sense”....but bureaucrats can, and most certainly do pass laws that generate revenue via the lack of the aforementioned "common sense"

DUI laws are another that run in this vein....

* " "Preemptive Rule" is any scenario of societal governance which presumes the legitimacy of doing what would be considered to be morally and/or ethically wrong simply on the basis that such action might ultimately prevent a future -- predicted but not guaranteed -- greater wrong. It is the societal equivalent of the End Justifying the Means."

 

So by this logic, you don't feel it should be illegal to drive your car drunk? To operate heavy machinery while impaired by drugs or alcohol? How about laws against performing surgery while drunk or being grossly negligent? Should people be able to build their own homemade bombs for doing whatever they want? All those actions could result in injury or death for you and others, but they don't automatically, so heck, why make them illegal, right?

 

Laws don't prevent people from doing any of those things, or else they wouldn't happen. Surgeons do operate drunk. Pilots fly drunk. Driver's drive drunk. He's saying to prosecute the actual crime of swerving, speeding, etc. Law punish, they don't prevent.

I think.

 

I'm saying the NEGLIGENT END RESULTS of a individual doing all those things should be, and are prosecutable under existing law....and should remain on an individual level....not a blanket prohibition on the "chance" someone's actions may harm others.

The "War on Drugs" is another Preemptive Rule
Smoking Bans, another....

each erode a little more individual liberty by placing a little more authority in the hands of our statist overlords...not to mention, revenue.

 

I'll be with you on smoking when smoking only affects the smoker. My liberty to not smoke should not be infringed upon by someone else's desire. People have homes and car windows that roll up. Go smoke there. Same with heroin or cocaine...do it in your home, not littering it on the street and I'm good.

 

Once the state felt free to outlaw drunk driving this becomes the natural extension.

I have no doubt this is one more statistically correct risk reduction. Sadly, the state never does the other side of the benefit/COST equation.

 

That defeats the purpose of any laws then. No laws prevent anything, they are all retroactive. The idea is not that they directly prevent behavior, but that they act as a deterrent to reduce that behavior. Those things will still occur but at least they occur without the de facto consent of society because they aren't illegal.

It's just like with children. Parents make rules for their children, with the intention being to discourage behavior that isn't wanted, and encourage behavior that is. When I tell my kids that they aren't allowed to hit each other, I don't think for a second that it's going to stop them from doing it, but it will make them think twice most of the time and their behavior will eventually adapt to the rule, give or take, and produce a more serene household environment. A society is no different, albeit on a exponentially larger scale.

 

The fine is the punishment. Just like with children, when they're bad and you take away privileges, toys, allowance, freedom, etc. A punishment without teeth is not a punishment at all, and not a deterrent. If this was a situation where they were making rules about situations that haven't been statistically proven to produce negative results, that would be different. And I have a feeling this law isn't aimed at the person who takes a call from their spouse for 15 seconds to pick up milk on the way home. It's aimed at those people who are constantly on the phone, sometimes texting even which takes your eyes directly off the road, as well as your attention. Do I agree with this law proposal? Heck yes I do. If it will prevent injury and death being caused by someone texting about how they're coming to the party after work, all the better. I'm not exactly sure where in the constitution it gives us the freedom to put other people's lives at risk. The general consensus always seems to be that freedoms are fine until your freedoms harm another person's freedoms.

 

Punishment is not a deterrent. It's a punishment. Morality is a deterrent. Logic is a deterrent. If someone refrains from killing you only because he knows 100% he will be caught and punished then he's still a killer, just unpunished.

It's like the laws that force bigoted store owners to bake cakes for gay weddings. They're still a bigot. They still don't like gays. You've just forced them into baking the cake, so now, not only do they hate gays more than before, but as a reward for clandestine intolerance they get the gay people's money.

Without that law gays would be able to see who the bigots are and who the non-bigots are and be able to put their hard-earned money into the hands of people who like them, support them, and care for them.

Punishment does not change who you are or what you're capable of doing. $500 speeding fines don't deter me from speeding. Triple it and I'll still weight the numbers and probability of being caught and perhaps purchase a radar detector. As for the cell phone drivers...how will they spot the bluetooth? Now, to enforce this law fully they will have to purchase detection equipment...I mean, where the hell does it all end.

Simple is just punishing people who speed, swerve, or cause accidents because they deserve to be punished.

 

What about blanket bans on smoking in a privately owned business?....no one is forced to patronize a tavern, for example, but statists in NY and other places have successfully interjected themselves in the management of these establishments...

and I've read of statist efforts to prohibit smoking in attached housing arrangements.

As I said earlier, each erodes a little bit more of our liberties....
and given the inherent propensity for ALL authoritarian entities to expand their scope...

complacently permitting such because of a "perceived immunity from susceptibility" (I don't smoke, so I don't care if they ban it...I don't pay taxes, so I don't care if they raise them...I don't care if they tax junk food and ban transfats because I don't consume them)....

only quickens our descent into centrally planned tyranny.

 

That's a subjective determination. The law doesn't punish you for thinking one way or another. You can be someone who fantasizes about having sex with children, but you only get punished if you act on those thoughts. It's the same with everything else. Laws are designed to punish actions and prevent them, not thoughts.

It's not the law's intention to change who a person is or how they think. I don't think a law can ever really do that. It's all about actions. Think what you want, but when you make the jump from thought into action, the situation has changed.

You proved my own point. You're weighing the risks of getting caught with your desire to speed. If there was no law against speeding, would you be weighing that risk or would you just speed all the time? You make a good point about enforcement, I'm not sure how they'll manage that either, but if this law keeps some drivers off their cellphone when they are operating a motor vehicle at high speeds around other innocent drivers, all the better.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you....the nanny statist.

 

Let me present to you, every punk kid who thought he knew more than his teachers.

Go ahead, put that piece of gum in and chew it with your mouth open, because I know you're just itching to say "I don't need your stinkin rules, teach!"

 

I think it would be a good idea. But this is just another obama failure. Was it not obama that started that obamaphone ? Free cell phones. Just shows how he uses people. First he gives a phone to someone then creates a law,to ban from using it...LOL...sheep.

 

That's like saying "Stupid government, giving me the right to own a gun and then creating a law that says I can't shoot people whenever I feel like it".

 

There are already laws against distracted driving, this is an unneeded law. BTW it's already against Federal law for a truck driver to talk or text on a cell phone while driving. Bluetooth must be used and even being seen holding a cell phone in a moving semi will cost the driver up to $2750 and the company up to $11,000. http://blogs.fredericksburg.com/tra...ommercial-vehicle-drivers-takes-effect-today/

 

using a hand held i could see being very dangerous as you arent keeping your eyes on the road as you are trying to multi task either dialing a number,read a text or text back. me personally i think texting while driving should be very illegal at all times as well as talking on the phone if you have to use your hands unless its a straight up extreme emergency.

but hands free should be allowed, thats no different than talking to a passenger or singing along with the radio lol.

if you gotta use your hands to talk on the phone, im down to make that illegal.

 

Actually, no. That was BUSH. The Federal Communications Commission’s LifeLine Assistance and Link-Up programs began providing free landline phones for the poor in 1996. The program was expanded in 2008 to include cell phones.

(*)(*)(*)(*) that frikkin communist socialist pinko homo Bush! How unamerican!

 

Let 'em talk, or text, or surf.

But if they cause an accident, they are subject to the same laws as drunk/impaired drivers are.

Around here that's suspension of driving privileges for a year.

 

What I do in my car should be none of the government's business so long as it does not interfere in how others drive their cars.

I am sick of governments convicting people of the crime of 'doing things that might theoretically end up causing others a degree of harm'.

When I cause harm - then I should be arrested - not before (unless I have made threats or did actions which showed an obvious intention to deliberately do others harm).


Most of you slack-jawed robots undoubtedly disagree.

 

Yeah, that's true. You should have to kill me wife first, and then I'm allowed to be mad at you for doing something you know creates a hazard to those around you.

 

Keep your hands off my body, my uterus, my bedroom, my drugs....

but please....do tell me what perfectly legal activities I can and cannot do in my car....
and fine me if I get caught not complying with your preemptive dictates.