Three strikes?
Subtitle: “Laws? Those are for other people.”
As with a former anti-gun California State Senator and a current anti-gun California U.S. Senator who both reportedly held “concealed carry” permits to carry their personal firearms with them in the past, some folks seem hypocritical with regard to laws.
Maria Shriver (Ahhhnold‘s wife) has apparently been caught for a third time violating California’s hands-free device requirement for cell phoning while driving, according to a Web site (TMZ) that deals with celebrity gossip. The CNN article has a link to a video of Maria Shriver driving while phoning without a hands-free device.
“So what?” you say.
Precisely… “everyone” is ignoring California’s hands-free device law because it does not “seem” to be actively enforced. I say “seem” because I am sure that some law enforcement person out there can tell me how many thousand tickets have been issued. According to the CNN article, the California Highway Patrol issued tickets for about 112,000 cell phone violations in the first year that the law was in place. (Supposedly, nobody keeps track of citations issued by county and local departments.) The offense is so COMMON, however, that I listed drivers who ignore this law as one subspecies of (“garden-variety“) California “maroon.” (Not endangered… too many to count….)
(The offense is ALSO so common that widespread, consistent enforcement of the law [as with a hypothetical 
enforcement of “carpool lane violations”] should provide a VAST source of revenue for our revenue-strapped state. Who knows? We might not even have to make our school children and college kids suffer so much for the past excesses of their State Legislators. ) (Note added October 18,2009: The tuition at most state colleges has increased about 30% in the last six months, and some public schools are being closed because of budget cuts.) (Note added October 19, 2009: “I’d like to help you, son, but you’re too young to vote.” – The Who, “Summertime Blues“)
Driving while talking on a cell phone (EITHER hand-held or hands-free) was found to be as dangerous as drunk driving by University of Utah psychologists in the June 29, 2006 issue of Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. So, California legislators, always eager to pass more laws to make themselves feel safer, passed a ban on driving while phoning using a hand-held device, and the bill was signed by Governor Schwarzenegger. Enforcement of the ban began on July 1, 2008. (I THOUGHT that the ban had been in place for over a year!) The law provides for a $20 fine for a first offense, and $50 for each subsequent offense.
Maria Shriver has not been cited.
In the Los Angeles County municipality of Brentwood (yep, another one) where she lives, the Superior Court set the cost of a first ticket at about $93 and the second ticket at $201. On Tuesday, Governor Schwarzenegger sent a Twitter message (“tweet”) to the TMZ editor promising swift action, and today Maria Shriver issued an apology.
“We don’t really think that hand-held bans have a whole lot of impact,” said Jonathan Adkins, spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Association in Washington. His organization urges drivers not to use a cell phone of any type while driving, but does not support laws banning the use.
My immediate question is, “Why did the California Legislature waste taxpayer money bothering to pass the law in 2008, if it is ineffective in preventing accidents and not effectively enforced?” My guess is that they passed it for the same reasons that they passed a law based on future technology that arguably does not exist yet – to give the impression that they are actually doing important work up in Sacramento, to extend their (illusion of) control, and to make themselves and their more nervous constituents feel “safer.”
For more illusions, this time from the AAA with regard to “distraction-free driving,” please read the CNN article.
Assuredly, “we’re all mad here….”
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™
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