It's hard to find evidence of fatal accidents that were caused by "distracted drivers". Occasionally they do happen, but they are hard for accident investigators to prove.

This whole "distracted drive" campaign is just another witch hunt for the various police agencies. Drunk driving arrests at sobriety checkpoints have dropped to such a low number that the police now use them to seize vehicles that are unregistered.

A few years back, there was a big push to put children in car seats, and before that--there was some hysteria about seat belts. The Legislature even passed a law giving the police the right to look into your car as you were driving to see if you were "belted up".

It's really time to look towards the day when cars are self-driving, and we can put an end to this constant refinement of the nanny state--brought to us, in large part, by Joe Simitian.

Posted by Resident
a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood
on May 14, 2012 at 1:39 pm

Distracted driving comes in many forms. I recently was in the right hand lane where the car in the left hand lane was driving erratically. As we both stopped at the red light, I could plainly see the driver with a spoon in one hand and a yogurt in the other.

Contrary to what Wilson states it isn't that hard to find examples. I found these 3 in about one minute with Google. I'm sure there are others. I don't consider it a "nanny state" to enact laws against this kind of patently dangerous behavior. If somebody does something stupid that puts themselves at risk be my guest. However, when it involves potentially killing me or my kids you just lost my sympathy.

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