EDITORIAL – Cell phone ban not necessary for Pa. drivers

State lawmakers are currently considering two separate bills that would put limitations on… State lawmakers are currently considering two separate bills that would put limitations on driver-related distractions – the cause of an alarming amount of automobile collisions in the United States.

The first would, among other things, restrict the number of passengers that 16- and 17-year-old drivers can have in a car to one, with the exception of family members. The second, proposed by Pennsylvania Sen. Jim Ferlo (D-Pittsburgh), would prohibit motorists from talking on and texting from handheld cell phones while driving.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that driver distractions factor into the cause of 20 to 30 percent of all car crashes in the United States – an unsettling statistic that has caused many local and state lawmakers to reconsider the amount of restrictions currently placed on drivers.

Seven states, not including Pennsylvania, have passed statewide cell phone bans, and other states, including California, have put limitations on the number of passengers for teenage drivers.

Let’s face it. Many teenage drivers are just an accident waiting to happen. And when you factor loud (and sometimes immature) friends into the mix, well, let’s just say we wouldn’t want to be on the road when that car passes by.

So, at least for the first few months of driving, there should be limitations imposed on teenage license holders. There is a learning curve to driving: That is, most teenagers don’t emerge fresh from the Department of Motor Vehicles an experienced and thoroughly capable motorist.

It takes time, the occasional near-crash and experience driving on a variety of roadways to become a good driver. But putting ourselves in the distantly removed perspective of a 16- or 17-year-old high school student, two years might be a little extreme. While there is a learning curve to driving, if the government trusts teenagers to learn to drive in six months, why can’t they learn to adapt to a car of passengers in the same amount of time?

Sure, there will still be accidents caused by a rowdy car of giggling girls or arrogant let’s-see-how-fast-I-can-round-this-curve-in-front-of-my-buddies guys, but for the majority of teenage drivers, six months with a one-passenger restriction should be enough time to settle into the pressures of driving – and appreciate the value of a quiet car.

While the passenger limit for teenagers is a reasonable restriction that might help to curve the amount of crashes caused by teens, the cell phone ban is harder to get behind, primarily because we already have legislation that punishes people who cause accidents because of cell phone use: reckless driving citations.

Obviously, a cell phone ban is meant to be more preventative than a means of punishing people who have already caused an accident. But, rather than tack on another piece of legislation, why don’t our police just issue more reckless driving citations to drivers before they get into collisions. That way, if a driver appeared to be distracted by a cell phone, iPod or a rowdy passenger, he would be cited appropriately.

At the end of the day, some people are just really bad drivers, and while we need to work to lower the amount of accidents caused by driver distractions, legislating broad-scale distraction bans isn’t the right way to go.