Down with texting while driving, but save the handoff

I’ve been critical of behind-the-wheel multitasking and would highly recommend that people not talk or text while driving or operating trains, buses, or trolleys. But I doubt that legislation would be effective in preventing the practice.

Legislation would be much preferable, however, to the truly bizarre suggestion of Mark A. Shiffrin, a lawyer and former consumer protection commissioner for Connecticut, and Avi Silberschatz, chairman of the computer science department at Yale. In a column titled “Thumbs on the Wheel” in the New York Times, they concede that “…the way to stop people from using cellphones while driving is not to make it a crime.” Their suggestion: “A more effective approach is to get telecommunications companies to tweak technology to make it difficult or impossible to text and drive.”

Essentially, they want to disable cell-tower handoff. That’s a bad idea on many fronts. First, it would just force a driver talking on his cell phone to redial every few minutes as he speeds down the highway (Shiffrin and Silberschatz do suggest a three-minute delay before a handed-off phone can redial.) It would prevent passengers from using their phones, although they do say “…it is also easy to imagine technology that would allow only passengers to use their phones—by tethering them to devices, placed on the passenger side of the car, that would override the system.” All I can imagine is a driver with a foot on the gas and one hand on the steering wheel leaning over to the passenger side to pull the enabled, tethered handset to his ear. But worst, their scheme would affect people who take trains and buses—especially those who do so in order to get extra work done.

The right approach is not a technical one in this case. The right approach is education, plus stiff punishment for drivers whose recklessness causes accidents.