I am convinced…
…after reading this piece, that at some point in our not-too-distant future the government will try to ban driving while eating.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
…after reading this piece, that at some point in our not-too-distant future the government will try to ban driving while eating.
That’s it: torch and pitchfork time.
Why stop there? Why not use remote technology to disable the cars altogether?
That would eliminate 100% of driving fatalities. And what politician wouldn’t want that/i> on his record?
What’s that you say? We can’t do that, because The People would never stand for it? Sorry, I forgot all about paying attention to Them… it’s been out of fashion lately.
Apologies for the lack of italics closure… I should proofread better.
My bet for the next target is isolating the driver from the passengers.
I almost got in an accident once when changing my radio station….
I wonder what the stats are for texting while bicycle riding?
I bet Ben Bailey of Cash Cab could eat ribs, drive thru NYC and conduct a game show all at the same time in his taxi. I think we should call him as the people’s first witness.
Stark-
I know my red minivan has been nearly run into by bicyclists on the cellphone.
“This same study determined coffee to be the #1 cause of food-related crashes, with soup, tacos, chili dogs, and hamburgers rounding out the top five.”
That is the funniest study I’ve ever heard of. I think it irresponsible that the study did not include a breakdown between traditional tacos and fish tacos. Maybe there is a safer taco to eat? I want to know that, to improve my chances of getting home alive. For instance, chili dogs with onions which can fall off must be more dangerous than chili dogs w/o onions. This type of stuff should be studied.
Note that unless they “own” us as means of production, the state and nation lose nothing in productivity, or anything else they are “expecting” to have from that person.
Only a slaver would look at a group of people and think that he/she lost productive capacity if one died of their own behavior he/she couldn’t prevent or mitigate in some way or idea or social solution.
with no natural limit and a sense that their job is to fill the world with Confucian laws to control the common class. The end result can only be totalitarianism of some form by another name as we are dumb enough to accept that by other means & names, but not dumb enough to accept it under the exact same name of which we are idiot vigilant (like airport tsa searches).
if you believe old style soviet communism is off the table, then the next notch up that is attractive is fascism… and that’s what we have under obama, they just don’t have the full control that they want yet, but are about to get it.
they are unleashing a huge raft of life controlling laws, and one only has to understand what a saddle does to break a horse to understand what is being tried….
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
Albert Camus
“Stalinism is the most successful variant of fascism” Susan Sontag
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
Adam Smith
just remember that totalitarianism doesn’t come first, it comes after there are enough laws and laws of a different nature, and so forth…. it can happen from violent action and the yolk to the neck, or it can happen like the camel, one straw at a time. how the condition is changed is irrelevant, the Caryatid is the result
from Wiki:
the premise under which such control is created is irrelevant…
once we accepted the premise that the state had to protect us from ourselves and each other outside the limits of constitutional law, we set precedence that they can keep incrementally regimenting our whole lives with “cradle to grave” ideas, as was the promise of all the socialist/fascist/communist/progressive/etc states…
to cut one way.
[edited for length by n-n]
I’m tired of politicians trying to “save lives” via legislation. This is the same reason for the salt & trans fat bans, smoking bans, etc. – although it is certainly much more intrusive. These busybodies want to “save” us from our bad habits.
Policemen, Firemen, Soldiers, Doctors – these people save lives; politicians just make our lives more difficult with their ever-intrusive legislation.
Sorry, gotta take a contrary viewpoint here. Regardless of whether or not the government views us a factor of production, cell phone use puts other people at risk, not just the cell phone user.
That puts it in the same category as DUI. I couldn’t care less if people get roaring drunk and crash into concrete abutments or do so while yakking or texting on a cell phone. In fact, I’m rather pleased; it culls the herd of morons.
But when said morons crash into others – who had no say in their stupid decision – I am up in arms. It’s…it’s anti-Darwinian (particularly if the moron survives).
Can’t ban eating, or kids, or makeup, and it’s too late to ban radios, but this one we can do something about.
For every cell phone conversation of a surgeon hurrying to save a life by directing prepping of a patient there are probably 10,000 brainless women/teenaged girls talking about clothes or parties, and another 10,000 brainless men/teenaged boys talking about sports or video games. After each close call occasioned by a cell phone user, I want to yell at them, “What was #$%^&* important that it couldn’t keep until your arrival?”
But when said morons crash into others – who had no say in their stupid decision – I am up in arms. It’s…it’s anti-Darwinian (particularly if the moron survives).
In the 20 something years of driving, most of it in a college town, I’ve only been in one wreck, and that person hit me. If you get run over by a moron on his/her cell phone that’s perfectly Darwinian.
Gotta drive with your head on a swivel. Expect the other guy to be an idjit, and do the worst possible thing at the worst possible time.
Until I can add one of these bad boys to my car, that is…
That’ll slice me in half. 🙂
Gotta drive with your head on a swivel. Expect the other guy to be an idjit, and do the worst possible thing at the worst possible time.
I most certainly expect the other guy to be an idjit. But I’ve been at a dead stop in traffic (an all too frequent occurrence in SoCal), on the freeway, with cars on either side, watching in horror in my rear view mirror as some idjit hurtles toward me at 70+ mph, happily texting away. I’ve pumped the brakes furiously (hoping the flashing brake lights would interrupt the literary interlude), slid down in the seat, and prayed that the idjit would look up. So far each one has, although several laid enough rubber to end up with acircular tires.
Haven’t tried swiveling, though.
Seriously, in this and many other situations no amount of driving acumen is of any avail. Moreover, by not condemning the practice, we imply that it would be OK for everyone to drive in that fashion. OK, we can look out for the odd person, the idiot doing 40 or 90 mph on the freeway (depending on the emotional tenor of his conversation, presumably) and drifting between lanes. But what if half of the drivers drove like that?
Alternatively, we should make having an accident while talking on a cell phone (easily ascertained from phone company records) a felony – just like DUI.
I like the Vulcan idea. I’ve thought about it wistfully on numerous occasions. I’d want a HUD for targeting purposes, of course…
The assertion that 80% of wrecks involve people eating is hard to believe.
I join Occam’s Beard on this.
There is a big difference between the government telling me what to eat (even if I am endangering myself by it) and telling me when I should not eat (if I am endangering others by it). The first I oppose, the second I support.
I would treat it like reckless driving–punishable for itself, more seriously if it is associated with an accident, and still more seriously if it is associated with injury or death.
“”That puts it in the same category as DUI.””
OB
That’s one way to look at it. But i’d argue it’s a way that wrongfully assumes the nanny statism that comes from such an approach is not worse than the problems it supposedly solves. This very blogpost of Neo’s is hinting at how it wont likely stop at cell phones or eating while driving either.
I don’t have a problem with forbidding talking while driving, but I do have a problem with disabling the phone for passengers or people stuck in a big traffic jam with nothing moving. Taking a sip of coffee while you’re stopped at a traffic light isn’t a problem. Eating while driving full speed on a windy road is. Maybe they just need to expand the catalogue of reckless driving offences and throw the book at people who are caught acting like idiots and confiscate cell phones of offenders.
1. Where to strike the balance between liberty and security? “100% security and 0% liberty,” say the nanny staters.
2. I could probably be persuaded to support proposals like OB’s that causing an accident while smoking, texting, eating, etc be punished extra stringently.
3. But that will never be proposed, because part of the game is to get support from state & local gvts, and Democrat corporate donors, by offering revenue sources. The Daily Caller’s headline, “Deactivating cell phones while driving is pointless”, misses the point.
4. Afaic it’s not enough to block or blunt parasitic ideas like this. They should be punished by budget & personnel cuts to the proposing agency.
5. That LaHood calls himself a Republican means that his department is a specially appropriate place to start cutting: it sends a message to the administration, to RINOs, and to the voters. How about it, Speaker-To-Be Boehner?
But i’d argue it’s a way that wrongfully assumes the nanny statism that comes from such an approach is not worse than the problems it supposedly solves.
I oppose nanny statism as much as anyone. I think people have a right to be stupid, and many people vigorously exercise that right. So no problem with anything anyone does that only affects himself.
But that’s just the problem. Someone texting away in a humongous SUV can blow away some sensible driver (swiveling furiously) in a smaller car and walk away with a scrape or two. And that’s just wrong. The situation is exactly like that of DUI, IMO.
Perhaps the solution (other than a change in mores – good luck with that) is the half-baked suggestion I made above: consider any accident involving a cell phone user to be that user’s fault, by law (much like hitting a car from behind, at least in CA), and make it felony reckless driving.
In high school I knew a girl who died after crashing while eating…
I have almost crashed while using the GPS component of my Blackberry. And yes trying to check your email on a Blackberry while driving is rather difficult. Surfing the net and driving is very hard.
But I digress. I have a funny story to tell – when I was a kid I would see ads saying “don’t drink and drive”. And then one day I saw my dad take a swig of Mountain Dew while at the wheel. I said, “Dad! Don’t drink and drive!” They had to explain to me about alcohol and soda.
Artfldgr’s 4:07 pm comment was one of his best.
This government no longer recognizes any limits whatsoever to its authority. And passing bills without reading them makes a mockery of the entire concept of “representative government”.
I saw his comment earlier before it was edited (and before I could respond), and actually, that’s one I’d prefer not to have been edited, Neo.
One time driving to work on the Interstate I glanced over my right side to see a gal eating a bowl of something while driving. No hands on the wheel, driving with her knee’s I suppose. This at 70+ mph. There is no law to prevent that kind of stupidity
Papa Dan:
That reminds me. Once when I was driving on the New York State Thruway, I passed a car. I looked over and saw the driver reading a paperback book propped on the steering wheel.
For years I told that story as a “you won’t believe what I saw” kind of thing. But at least he was on a straight stretch of road that wasn’t crowded. I now believe that texting while driving in traffic is infinitely worse.
Unfortunately for Secretary LaHood, while fatalities overall are basically flat, fatalities per mile/per population/ per registered vehicle/per licensed drivers are all in steady long term decline (see here). As a typically late adopter, I don’t remember when cell phones became mass-market, but one would think if they were the menace the Secretary suggests they are, the trend would be different.
“”fatalities per mile/per population/ per registered vehicle/per licensed drivers are all in steady long term decline “”
Soviet
There may very well be the correlation of increased distractions making better drivers over time. I credit most of my driving skills to a lot of stickshifts with the music up loud and a coke between my legs i did not want to spill. 🙂
Art is right about things coming down the pipe-this Food safety Act is potentially huge if you are a small farmer, and one of our local doctor owned hospitals is being blocked from expanding due to Obama care-Texas Spine and Joint Hospital in Tyler, Texas. What buisiness is it of the Feds if a local hospital that is privately owned wants to expand its facilities? control freaks!
“Banning Four Loko – or whatever new, popular drink will replace it – simply avoids addressing the real problem.”
Much like banning intelligent profiling for a certain group of “man caused disaster causers” in favor of groping nuns and 3 year olds….
I guess I’m with Jim et al — let’s err on the side of less government intrusion, not more, and let’s punish the people who are actually causing harm.
Yeah, I’m nervous too about idiots who text while speeding. But come to think of it, I’m also nervous about speeding idiots who are distracted by eating, talking, paying more attention to the girlfriend than to the road.
Basically, I’m nervous about speeding idiots, period. But I don’t think my nervousness should be legislated.
– – – – –
In re funny driving stories, here’s a joke I used to get a kick out of telling…
You want to talk about crazy drivers? Once I was going north on I-93, about 70 MPH, and I saw this lady driving while KNITTING A SWEATER. On the highway! I couldn’t believe my eyes, and you better believe I kept my distance.
But right when I was muttering to myself, “where’s the state troopers when you need them?”, along came a state trooper. And he saw what she was doing, and I could see him double-take in his squad car… so he gets behind her and turns on the flashing blue lights.
No response from her whatever. She goes on knitting her sweater. So the cop turns on his siren. Still, no response; she just goes right on knitting her sweater! So the cop drives alongside her, rolls down his passenger-side window, and screams at her: “PULL OVER!!”
She screams back: “NOOO!!!
“IT’S A CARDIGAN, NOT A PULLOVER!”
I can tell you that if you have an accident while on a cell phone, the cell phone records are subject to subpoena. If the records place you on the phone at or near the time of the collision, your lawyer will have a hard time successfully defending you, unless you’ve got some very strong physical evidence in your favor. If the evidence is 50-50 and you were on the cell phone, your insurance company is about to pay some money.
Daniel in Brookline: which is why I have long said that the worst drivers in the US are to be found inside Route 128. 🙂
[I once drove a U-Haul van from Florida to Mass. There were only two instances of bad/discourteous drivers. Yup. Both Inside 128.]
I’d say folks who are angry and in a hurry are a much bigger risk, as is the lack of enforcement of basic traffic laws. (I’ve nearly missed my light several times because people were STILL running their red, seconds before my green went yellow.)
Enforce the laws already on the books. ESPECIALLY the ones that mandate pulling over if there’s more than X cars piled up behinds you. That would make the roads safer– not pulling over my mom, in her pickup, on a flat, straight road, talking to her daughter on the phone.
I remember a train accident several years ago. Apparently the engineer pleaded guilty to smoking pot in the cab. The government responded with requirements for more stringent drug tests.
But witnesses reported seeing a crew member throw a portable TV into a nearby river. An NFL playoff game was in progress at the time of the accident.
they won’t ban driving while eating, at least not initially.
They’ll (for your own good of course, your health and to fight “the obesity epidemic”) ban drinking hot beverages and eating “junkfood” in vehicles.
When that’s shown not to work, they’ll ban drive throughs at “junkfood restaurants”.
That won’t work either, so they have an excuse to ban McDonalds et.al. altogether.
Only when that turns out not to have the desired effect will they ban the presence of food in cars unless in locked containers in a place inaccessible to the occupants.
Art is right in an important point: it is not the scope of government power in itself that is killing West, but ideology behind this power. It is ideology which makes government intervention so pervasive and turns autoritarism into totalitarism.
“Art is right in an important point: it is not the scope of government power in itself that is killing West, but ideology behind this power.”
The ideology dictates the scope to a large extent.
Eating while driving is already banned in the UK.
Look over the Atlantic & you can see your future.
which is why I have long said that the worst drivers in the US are to be found inside Route 128.
When I first moved to Boston I almost caused an accident by … stopping for a yellow light that was red by the time I got there.
Much screeching of brakes, squealing of tires, swearing and shaking of fists by purple-faced motorists behind me then ensued. Stopping for a red light? WTF was wrong with this stupid Californian?
Conversely, I learned not to start off immediately on a green light, because several cars would doubtless run the light.
My worst Boston driving story: I saw a guy cut off an ambulance with lights and sirens on. The ambulance weaved around him, whereupon the guy gunned his car up onto a raised dividing strip, raced along it until overtaking the ambulance, and then dropped back in to cut off the ambulance a second time. Amazing.
Occam’s Beard: what you say is true, true, true. Boston drivers are legendary.
There is also the signage problem.
Fred: are you serious?? Do you have a link for that?
Totally off-topic, but I thought OB especially should see this, per the discussion a few days ago with the troll concerning Muslim immigration.
(Of course everyone else should take a look too)
Part I:
http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2010/11/disinviting_islam_part_ithe_ne.html
Part II:
http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2010/12/disinviting_islam_part_ii_prop.html
It’s strong stuff, but a good baseline.
Why you wonder so much, Neo? There is a whole branch of legislation in Britain named “Health and safety rules”. This is a peace of work! These rules forbid policemen to attempt rescue drowning person because these policemen can accidently get drown themselves. Only authorized professionals are allowed to save even children who fallen in pond! Likewise, no policemen can attempt to save somebody from a fire: it also allowed only to firefighters. I also do not have a link, but ban on eating would not surprise me a bit.
neo, the signage problem is indeed severe. Navigating in Boston in the pre-GPS era was indeed a daunting exercise in inferential logic.
“Let’s see, I’m on a undisclosed major street that intersects the following cross streets, and a turn onto an undisclosed major cross street yields the following intersections. Given that, after studying the map, I infer I must be…here!”
Conversely, some intersections have a plethora of signs, far too many to read while on the move. It’s like reading War and Peace on a drive-by basis. Worse still, the signs often appeared at the intersection, not before. What were they thinking when they did that?
(Btw, neo, in case this should be of any interest, my ambulance story was set at Alewife Brook Parkway and Mass. Ave. The ambulance was heading north on Mass. Ave., trying to negotiate a left turn onto Alewife Brook Parkway when cut off.)
Sergey: my mind is officially boggled.
I know a bit about Britain’s gun laws and the laws on self-defense, which are horrendous. And I know it’s much further along than we are in nanny-statedom. But still, I had no idea it had gone that far.
In some respects Britain is more Stalinist than even the original Russian version. In USSR there were (and still are) lots of idiotic laws and instructions, but almost nobody took them seriously, common sense trumps these laws at every turn. But Brits are known to be law-abiding citizen, they try to implement all this idiocy literally.
Sergey: well, didn’t Marx originally think Marxism was more likely to be implemented in Britain than in Russia?
“Daily Telegraph” and “Daily Mail” are full of horror stories about persons who attempted self-defense against intruders in their homes and were legally punished for it. Recently a housewife was attacked in her kitchen by a burglar who wielded a knife, and she scalded him by boiling soup from the stove. She had to pay for his prolonged medical threatment and additionally pay huge compensation for injury and moral harm. She was lucky for not being imprisoned.
Marx had a point here. Brits always were subjects, not citizens. Russians also were formally subjects, but actually anarchists, who were not ashamed to cheat against government and its officials whenever they believed they can get away with it. There always were two realities in Russia: one official, in which nobody believed, and actual reality, and these two realities were worlds apart. The whole edifice of state is no more than Potemkin village in Russia, and there are rather few who do not understand this.
Kolnai, thanks for the links, which are excellent and make good points.
The UK’s safety regulations re researchers are also horrendous. A faculty member was threatened with prosecution because he was in his office when one of his grad students blew himself up performing a preparation that the student a) had done many times before, and b) had employed a shortcut against explicit instructions to the contrary. The argument was that the faculty member should have been in the laboratory physically overseeing the student, not a few feet away in his office. (Never mind that faculty have administrative responsibilities, and therefore attend untold meetings, and yes! on occasion even teach, and so are only even in their offices part of the time.)
Apparently the authorities didn’t grasp that a grad student has more experience in chemistry than the typical secondary school teacher, who himself oversees the work of others.
No idea what became of this threat, but it was terrifying in its implications. Go into work a respected faculty member, leave in handcuffs an accused felon.
The whole edifice of state is no more than Potemkin village in Russia, and there are rather few who do not understand this.
wonderfully said..
i would guess that Sergey and myself could boggle the minds of most here with common trivia (like his point on the UK and their practices).
how burned out light bulbs were VERY valuable
how the source of red terror was this split reality, which made everyone and anyone a criminal regardless of action… and so could be tagged. “Show me the man and i will show you the crime” is a famous quote.
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding. U. S. Supreme Court Justice. Louis Brandeis (1856-1941)
Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. U. S. Supreme Court Justice. Louis Brandeis (1856-1941)
A credulous mind … finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are the easier they pass with him; but never regards those that are plain and feasible, for every man can believe such.Samuel Butler (1612-1680)
Philosophers have had such a poor record over the last two thousand years that they would do better to show a certain modesty rather than the lofty superiority that they usually display. Francis Crick (1916-2004)
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. Anatole France (1844-1924)
Where they have burned books, they will end in burning people. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
It sometimes happens that men who preach most vehemently about evil and the punishment of evil, so that they seem to have practically nothing else on their minds except sin, are really unconscious haters of other men. They think the world does not appreciate them, and this is their way of getting even. Thomas Merton
I wish to propose for the reader’s favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true, I must of course admit that if such an opinion became common it would completely transform our social life and our political system; since both are at present faultless, this must weigh against it. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)
How many lives have been SAVED by someone with a cellphone calling in a warning about a drunk driver, a vehicle stuck on the road, or a dead deer in a low spot in the road where it can’t be seen 200 feet approaching? I’ve made those last two calls. I called the deer in at 04:40; in half an hour the morning rush was going to begin. And the road had no hard shoulders and two underwidth lanes.
njcommuter –
Haven’t there been several stolen children who were recovered because someone spotted them (or the car) and chased them, on the phone the whole while?
I know I’ve more than once gone to pick up a female friend, drunk, late at night; on the phone with her the whole way.
It’s already illegal to drive recklessly; can’t they just enforce the bloody law?
neo,
Eating while driving in the UK links:
http://www.nopenaltypoints.co.uk/drinking-eating-while-driving.html
http://www.motordefenceteam.co.uk/offence-guide/careless-driving.htm
It is prosecuted as either careless driving or driving without due care and attention.
Fred: thanks for the links.
That’s different than an outright ban on eating/drinking while driving.
neo: there is an outright ban on careless driving/driving without due care and attention, and they deem eating while driving to be careless driving/driving without due care and attention.
So although there is no act of Parliament specifically banning it, it has been administratively banned by deeming it to constitute something that Parliament has expressly banned.
The difference is mere semantics, rather like CO2 being deemed to be an air pollutant by the EPA so that they can regulate it.
Fred: no, it’s not semantics—unless you define all law and all statutes as semantics (which law actually partakes of, in a way).
It is not a ban on driving while eating. In other words (at least, if I understand the way the law is written), no one is arrested for merely driving while eating, as they would be if there were a law against it. It appears from the links to be applied ex post facto, after an accident or an incident in which a person is driving bizarrely or in a way that gains attention because it seems reckless in some way. Then, if it is determined that the person was eating leading up to the accident or the incident, that is deemed to be careless driving under the law. But eating while driving is not actually criminalized in and of itself.
I understand that the effect is not enormously different. But it still is somewhat different; not just semantics.
it’s not applied in that way at all — I found a news report finally: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/motoring/article-1172155/Eating-wheel-add-40-cost-car-insurance.html
You don’t have to have caused any accident, or actually done anything dangerous. The police consider eating while driving to be dangerous per se.
There was a case about 5 years back that I can’t find a reference to at the moment where somebody was ticketed for eating an apple in stationary traffic… with the handbrake on. There was another one involving a Kit Kat under similar circumstances.
Fred: I don’t want to be nitpicky with you, but it still isn’t clear how the law is applied. Were people stopped merely because they are eating or drinking? Or were they stopped because they actually were driving carelessly, and as they pulled over the officer observed that they were in fact eating or drinking?
It’s not completely clear; could be either. In the second case, the offense is the driving behavior and the eating/drinking is assumed ex post facto to have been the cause. In the first, the eating/drinking while drinking is itself an actionable offense.
Of course, in practice, the lines would tend to blur. People might be pulled over only for eating/drinking while driving and the officer would later say they had been driving recklessly. What could the driver do, say they were driving carefully? His/her word against the officer’s?
But still, there is a difference between the two laws in the way they would be written, and what is criminalized. There is also at least a theoretical difference in how broadly they would be applied. In practice, of course, the difference may or may not be blurred.
The former. At least in a number of cases. Merely sitting in a car behind the wheel and consuming.
If it were the latter we would be in 100% agreement.
Found one (charges later dropped): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/774655.stm
It is interesting if chewing gum being considered “eating” under UK laws? It would make a whole new dimension to an idiom “chewing gum while walking”!
Seriously, the best principle of Roman civil law was “What people do with mutial consent and without serious harm to other people’s interests, the laws found fair”.
Fred: wow. Just wow. That case you posted the link to is a case of justice gone egregiously wrong.
I won’t say “what is this world coming to?” I’ll say “what has this world come to?”