CONTACT YOUR MA LEGISLATOR NOW AND TELL HIM TO KEEP HIS HANDS OFF YOUR CELLPHONE!

Massachusetts liberals are at it again, pushing to make it illegal for you to talk on your regular cell phone while driving.  According to notorious Nanny State hack Sen. Mark Montigny, it’s a matter of life and death:

“If [the ban] is an inconvenience for people, tough,” Montigny says. “The inconvenience of the death and destruction on the road far outweighs any minor inconvenience.”

He’s not alone:

"Anybody putting one of those things in their hand while driving is potentially committing suicide," said Rep. James Miceli (D-Wilmington). "I think it's ludicrous that we go on year after year … the lobbyists come right in, like they're here today, come right in and kill the issue."

Wow! “Death and destruction?” “Potentially committing suicide?”  Driving while talking on your iPhone must be really, really dangerous! Why, there must be dead bodies all over the road.

Or maybe not.

Since 1995, there's been an eightfold increase in cellphone subscribers in the United States, and we've increased the number of minutes spent on cellphones by a factor of 58.

What's happened to traffic fatalities in that time? They've dropped—slightly, but they've dropped. Overall reported accidents since 1997 have dropped, too, from 6.7 million to 6 million. Proponents of a ban on cellphones say those numbers should have dropped more. "We've spent billions on air bags, antilock brakes, better steering, safer cars and roads, but the number of fatalities has remained constant," safety researcher David Strayer told the New York Times in July. "Our return on investment for those billions is zero. And that's because we're using devices in our cars."

Strayer would have a point if he were looking at the right statistics. But we drive a lot more than we did in 1995. Deaths in proportion to passenger miles are a far better indicator of road safety than overall fatalities. In 1995, there were 1.72 deaths for every 100 million miles traveled. By 2007, the figure had dropped to 1.36, a 21 percent decline.

If Massachusetts pols are right, and talking into your Droid is borderline suicide, why are there fewer deaths and fewer wrecks on the cell-phone covered roads?

And why would dopes like Sen. Montigny and Rep. Miceli say these idiotic things in public? Don’t they Google? These facts aren’t in dispute—not anywhere.

There is some small debate about hands-held vs. hands-free phones (the MA law would allow the latter), but the vast majority of the evidence is that talking into your Blue Tooth is just as “dangerous” as holding the phone in your hand.

Don’t believe me? Ask the Nanny Staters pushing cell phone bans. They admit that hands-free doesn’t “help” because it’s not your hands that cause the problem—it’s your mind. You get lost in conversation and get distracted.

So if you’re going to ban cellphones while driving, the only ban that “makes sense” is a total ban...which is stupid.

UPDATE! Don’t get confused by uber-texting as-swi-pes trying to defend texting by attacking cell phones. Texting while driving is far more dangerous and the evidence is overwhelming. Just click here.

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