Texting While Operating 4,000 Pound Lethal Weapons?
I was driving home from work the other day, listening to Wyoming Public Radio air a story about a bill to ban texting while driving. Listening to the radio while driving is a divided-attention task which can be distracting, like if I accidentally tune in to Rush Limbaugh and turn my eyes off the road while I desperately try to silence the inflammatory rhetoric before I lose my self control.
I remember watching a young Indonesian woman, dressed for the office, driving around a curve on her motorcycle, blasé and self-confident, steering with one hand and texting with the other. Although I was impressed, that’s a strategy for a short life span. Since then, I realize this is happening everywhere.
So, part of the story was a concern by legislators that if a person were stopped and ticketed for texting while driving, and that person chose to challenge the ticket, the police might need to subpoena his phone records to prove the case. Apparently some legislators feel this would be an invasion of privacy.
Let’s ask the people who get run over by texting drivers if they feel that their privacy was invaded.
Let’s ask the texting driver who was wandering all over the road, creating a reason for the officer to stop him, how he will feel after he runs over a pedestrian or crushes a car full of people: is there a “right to privacy” which allows people to behave like that?
Prosecutors and investigators gather evidence all the time to prove criminal behavior; what is sacred about a phone bill?