Texting While Driving
There’s more justification for a law against texting while driving than for helmet or seat belt requirements. A driver who doesn’t wear a seat belt is risking his own life in the case of an accident; a driver who writes text messages may endanger the lives of others.
However, if the state deems this activity too dangerous to permit, it should be illegal for everyone, not just for young drivers. We wouldn’t say that people can’t drive drunk unless they’re at least 21 years old.
I have not yet heard a convincing argument for outlawing “risky” behaviors. If you drive drunk and don’t hit anything and maintain your lane and speed, where’s the crime? (I know that driving with a BAC above the established limit is a crime, my point is that this is a crime without a victim.)
Comment by Josh Smith — May 26, 2009 @ 11:45 a.m.
So Josh, if a terrorist wanted to set off a bomb designed to kill hundreds of people at a park gathering, but the bomb went off at the wrong time when nobody was present and didn’t damage any property (other than some easy to replace grass and dirt), you think that they didn’t commit a crime? Or just a victimless crime deserving of a minor punishment?
At some point, outlawing risky bahavoior is justified when the risks become high enough that your behavior will harm someone else. Someone who drives 100 MPH past a grade school while the kids are boarding the school bus deserves a speeding ticket.
If I wanted to set off an atom bomb in the middle of a city, but truly did it for science and hoped not to hurt anyone, is the government not justified to try to prevent me from doing this? Do they have to wait until I unintentionally, but predictably, kill thousands of people to arrest me?
Determining what risks justify preventative laws and what risks are just an excuse for the government to tell someone how to live their life is part of the hard, messy work of democracy; something that many libertarians are, unfortunately, loathe to engage in.
Comment by David Stokes — May 26, 2009 @ 12:57 p.m.
I’m with David, here. Most people have an interest in discouraging behavior that puts other people at risk, whether or not any particular instance of that behavior actually results in harm.
Remember David Friedman’s points about risk in “The Machinery of Freedom”:
There’s a slight amount of risk that, when you pilot an airplane, you’ll crash into a home located underneath the flight path and kill its inhabitants. This risk is so small, however, that it doesn’t make sense for the law to use the mere possibility of disaster to prohibit flying airplanes.
On the other hand, there’s a substantially larger amount of risk that if you place one bullet in a revolver, spin the chamber, point it at somebody’s head, and pull the trigger, you’ll kill them. The odds are still against this actually happening, but it seems likely you would agree with me that it should be illegal to subject other people to involuntary Russian roulette — even for the five out of six cases in which the bullet fails to fire.
I agree that government bureaucrats are not likely to make wise decisions about the level of risk that sensible law should tolerate, but that’s not an argument against the mere existence of such law.
Comment by Eric D. Dixon — May 26, 2009 @ 1:10 p.m.
Totally agree. I think Josh has probably gotten the tone now. Preventing is always better than curing. It wouldn’t be wise not to enforce a law because of a “lucky” turn of events. The purpose is to deter the risky behavior, not necessarily to punish an already committed crime. A ticket will ensure the driver will not in the future, operate a vehicle with a BAC over the limit, and in doing so, eventually prevent risks of accidents.
Comment by Clovis Ouangraoua — May 26, 2009 @ 2:58 p.m.
David, your analogy is ridiculous.
Blowing up dirt and grass is property damage. And the act of attempting to kill someone is totally different from everyday negligence. Negligence is only criminal when it causes harm.
The school bus thing is also different because it’s gross negligence. You shouldn’t be going 100mph anywhere and you aren’t allowed to pass a school bus.
Distraction is not something that goes on in your hands. It doesn’t matter if you are texting, flipping with the radio, putting in a CD, or looking at the house on your left. Drivers take their attention off of driving almost constantly because it is impossible to sustain attention on a mundane task that you do so instinctively. Removing texting is not going to remove distracted driving.
Comment by awm — July 13, 2009 @ 10:45 a.m.
AWM,
My analogy is not the least bit ridiculous. It was fully aimed at Josh’s comment, not at Sarah’s post. Read it in light of Josh’s comments wondering why we have laws against risky behavior at all. I never said I supported the law against texting while driving (I don’t), I merely defended that idea that sometimes laws against risky behavior are fully justified as reasonable rules against results with a high enough predictablity of harming someone or something.
Comment by David Stokes — July 13, 2009 @ 11:35 a.m.