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: Grits for Breakfast

A distracting debate over police accidents

In recent years we've witnessed a great deal of demagoguery over "distracted driving" and a push for new, punitive traffic laws to reduce it. Longtime readers know I've found much of this rhetoric unconvincing: "Distracted" driving caused problems long before cell phones or texting, and I see no significant difference between talking on the phone while driving and putting on makeup, eating fast food from a drive-in, fiddling with the GPS, singing along with the radio, disciplining kids in the backseat, thinking about problems at work, or any number of the myriad other distractions drivers face. Plus, the introduction of cell phones and texting has corresponded with an overall national decline in traffic injuries while the population has risen, which doesn't seem to jibe with claims that expanded cell phone use or texting pose a significantly greater risk than all the other distractions out there...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on September 22, 2010 (boomark / email).