February 12, 2007
Link by Link
Can Common Sense Be Legislated?
By TOM ZELLER Jr.
LAST week, Carl Kruger, a Democratic state senator representing New York’s 27th District in South Brooklyn, introduced a bill into the Legislature that would, he said, tackle the pressing problem of “iPod oblivion.”
This, the senator suggested, is a sort of walking catatonia suffered by the thousands of owners of not just the popular music device from Apple, but any number of electronic gadgets — from Palm Pilots to cellphones.
The bill, which was referred to the transportation committee on Thursday, seeks to amend New York’s traffic and vehicle statutes by making it a crime to “enter and cross a crosswalk while engaging in the use of an electronic device in a city with a population of one million or more.”
Punishment for violators would include a court summons and a $100 fine.
Mr. Kruger’s justification for the bill, as submitted to the Legislature, was this:
“Since September, three pedestrians have been killed and one critically injured while crossing the street listening to electronic music devices. The use of electronic devices while crossing the street poses a threat to the public safety of pedestrians and motorists. It is impossible to be fully aware of one’s own surroundings when occupied in using an electronic device. This legislation would eliminate this threat to public safety. This legislation is seeking that people take a few seconds of their time to stop using their electronic devices while crossing the street. A few seconds that can save a person’s life.”
Mr. Kruger pointed in particular to a 23-year-old man from the Bergen Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn who was killed last month while crossing the street at Avenue T and East 71st Street — while jamming to his iPod.
•
Specific tragedies notwithstanding, a sampling of the comments around the Internet — including those left behind by readers of The Lede blog at nytimes.com, where I mentioned the bill last week — suggest that most people find the senator’s bill a bit nanny-minded and intrusive.
“Perhaps we should ban deaf and blind people from public streets, as well, just in case,” wrote Steve Consilvio, who added, “Who will protect us from the lawmakers?”
Another reader of The Lede, Peter Victor, noted, “I can’t begin to imagine how enforcement of this law would be effected. Could one comply with the law by merely pausing the music while crossing, or would it be necessary to remove the earphones from the ears? How could police disprove pedestrians’ claims that the device was off?”
(The senator had an answer for that one, Peter. The new bill states that “a user of an electronic device who holds such device to, or in the immediate proximity of his or her ear, is presumed to be engaging in the use of said device.”)
Many people echoed the sentiments of a user named Allan at the ebassist.com forum, who titled his thread, somewhat snidely: “N.Y. senator proposes interfering with natural selection.”
It’s a typical legislative reaction, according to Michael Masnick, the president and chief executive of techdirt.com, the technology and business intelligence portal.
“First there were bans on yakking while driving; then it was yakking while bicycling. So it’s only logical that they’d go after yakking while walking,” Mr. Masnick wrote in the Techdirt blog last Wednesday.
“Certainly, these things could be distracting, and in rare instances, it might cause someone to not notice that the sign is no longer blinking ‘walk,’ ” he added. “But the majority of people who talk on the phone or listen to an iPod are able to navigate the task of crossing the street just fine, without having to stop what they’re doing.”
The “yakking while driving” that Mr. Masnick refers to is something that is increasingly familiar to people in the Northeast. As of December, handheld cellphone restrictions for most drivers have been passed by legislatures in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington — and any cellphone use for public and school bus drivers in a handful of other states, according to the Governor’s Highway Safety Association ( snipurl.com/CellBans).
This despite the fact that, even today, according to the same association, “there are few studies and little crash data available,” on the topic. Many states are starting to gather cellphone-related crash data, but for the most part, the verdict is still out.
And “yakking while bicycling?” Well, New Jersey’s Legislature has been enterprising that bit of paternalism. The bill would require hands-free cellphones for people who want to talk while riding bicycles. Violators would receive fines from $100 to $250.
The bill was approved by a legislative committee last month, paving the way for consideration by the full state Assembly, according to The Associated Press, which also noted that while National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data showed 784 people were killed — including 17 in New Jersey — and 45,000 were injured in bicycle accidents in the United States in 2005, there was no accounting for collisions involving bicyclists using cellphones.
The most likely reason? It’s not that big an issue. Which makes one wonder why “yakking and bicycling” is such a priority in New Jersey.
Reasoned Mr. Masnick back in January: “The problem isn’t cellphone use; it’s stupid people who can’t figure out when is and when isn’t a good time to talk on the phone. Making the activity illegal won’t alleviate the problems their stupidity will cause.”
•
It is also worth noting that while a full 25 percent of bicycle deaths nationally in 2005 involved alcohol use, it is not illegal to ride a bike while drunk in New Jersey.
This might suggest that it’s just somehow easier to demonize all of the gizmos — the phones and PDAs and iPods — that we’ve holstered ourselves with in the modern age, even if the science is still out on whether they’re such a danger.
For decades, drivers have fiddled with the radio, chatted with friends, read maps and highway toll tickets, rifled through the glove compartment for CDs and cassette tapes, applied lipstick and shuffled through seat-side bags to find that last cigarette while driving.
Distractions all — and sometimes tragically so. But as one legislator from New Jersey told The Bridgewater Courier-News, in reference to the bicycle phone ban, “You can’t legislate common sense.”
And more specifically to the issue at hand, why wouldn’t New York’s State Assembly assume that people would, without any legislative prompting, gravitate naturally toward a judicious mix of iPod get-down and personal safety on city streets? It actually happens pretty much every day, all day.
Sure, people will get hit by buses while listening to iPods. But then, they’ve been getting hit by buses for decades anyway — while reading a newspaper, talking to companions or simply daydreaming about a better day.
Perhaps Mr. Kruger would like to outlaw daydreaming in crosswalks, too.
