4 ms·

Tacking stronger legislation onto a social problem is why the War on Drugs exists, which hurts more than it helps. I'm not saying we shouldn't add stronger legi

• Silhouette 10y ago
  I'm all for evidence-based policy-making, so I would have no objection in principle to considering alternatives like a public education campaign. That said, in this particular case, we had plenty of campaigning when existing laws were introduced here in the UK, and that doesn't seem to have been very effective. The near-total lack of enforcement means those who find using their phone while driving convenient continue to do so, despite the mountain of evidence about how dangerous it is. Worse, because we didn't also ban hands-free use, despite the mountain of evidence that it is almost as bad as hand-held phone use in terms of impairing driver performance, vendors of hands-free kits were literally putting up six foot high stands at the entrances to major stores the week after the ban came in with captions like "Stay safe -- go hands-free!" all over them. If we're going to solve this one, I suspect what we need is a combination of education and enforcement, both much stronger than we have seen so far. The number of people I come across online who maintain that they drive while using a phone all the time and are still perfectly safe is genuinely alarming.