Drunk-driving deaths rose in 2012, to 10,322 from 9,865 the year before. Did you hear anything about that? No? What about so-called distracted driving? Did you hear anything about that? Of course you did — and the announcement of a new enforcement technology makes it plain why distracted driving has been the cause celebre of the past few years.
Distracted driving isn’t nearly the killer that drunk driving is. In 2012, 3,328 motorists were supposedly killed by texting and other distractions behind the wheel. I say “supposedly” because while blood alcohol content is a matter of scientific fact, distracted driving is often simply a guess or conjecture on the part of the law enforcement officials on the scene. Was the driver young? Was there a cellphone somewhere in the car? Very few cases are as cut and dried as the case of the driver who recently crashed and died just seconds after posting a status update on Facebook — and even in that case, it’s impossible to say that she was still “distracted” when the crash happened.
Over the past two decades, many states have systematically turned drunk driving enforcement into a cash-generating machine that allows multiple offenders to return to the wheel again and again, so long as they pay the right rehab programs and the appropriate five-figure fines. The problem with this is that there’s a bit of a limit to it. As much as we’d like to associate impaired driving with wealthy socialites sloshing their Cadillac deVilles back from the country club, the truth is that it’s mostly the poor and unlicensed who are driving drunk.
It’s extremely difficult to extract fines and insurance-company-pleasing points from people who don’t even have a license in the first place. “Distracted drivers”, on the other hand, are people who can afford phones and data plans in addition to cars. Many of them are texting or communicating for work purposes, which means they’re employed in white-collar jobs. In other words, the potential to make money on them is almost limitless.
Enter the ComSonics technology that promises to give law enforcement a window into mobile-device use behind the wheel. Supposedly the technology can distinguish between calls, texting, and data usage. Can it tell a cop which one of a car full of teenagers on a Saturday night is actually on Facebook? Of course not.
What it can do is allow cops to scan a stopped freeway full of single-occupant vehicles on a busy commuter morning and simply pluck cash out of their pockets. These are drivers who have the ability to pay fines and will gladly do so in order to keep their licenses. Never mind that they represent a minimal threat to safety — your humble author’s single “distracted driving” ticket came from a cop who saw him sitting at a red light using Google Maps. They’re easy prey for a highway law enforcement community that has seen its primary mission change from safety enforcement to revenue collection with shocking speed in the past two decades.
Not every state legislature will reach for this low-hanging fruit, but many will. Surely Virginia, Maryland, and the other East Coast peoples’ republics where disdain for the motorist is all but written into the state constitution will make sure their cops continue to drive right by stranded families and morons driving at full speed on compact spares in order to focus on distracted-driving enforcement. Speedtrap municipalities will no doubt welcome the chance to spend a few thousand dollars of taxpayer money on a device that could earn them many times that amount in fines.
It’s even possible that insurance companies will support ComSonics detectors the same way that GEICO funded the development of the laser speed gun for highway patrolmen. Nobody wants to do business with drunk drivers, but “distracted drivers” made good customers who can be relied upon to pay their bills no matter how inflated those bills might be. Nothing’s quite as satisfying or profitable as raising prices on your existing customers, secure in the knowledge that it’s difficult for them to leave.
Just follow the money, as the man said, and you can easily see why “distracted driving” has been raised to approximate equivalence with child molestation in the media. Still, such a media and enforcement campaign would be worthwhile if it actually resulted in fewer deaths. Don’t look for that to happen. Instead, you’ll see more eyes farther off the road as drivers attempt to use their mobile devices in more furtive and more distracting fashion.
You’ll probably also see yet another rise in drunk-driving fatalities as the heat is taken off those unprofitable offenders to focus on the profitable ones. It’s a shame, but what’s a couple hundred or thousand extra innocent victims a year, compared with an opportunity to sell some neat gear to cops across the nation? Perhaps drivers can attempt to redress the balance by aggressively reporting drunk driving anywhere they see it. Just don’t use your phone to do it, okay?
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