Populist legislation

On Tuesday, a report from an insurance industry funded Highway Loss Data Institute caught my eye.

I saw a quote that mirrors language that I used 2 years ago. Adrian Lund, president of both HLDI and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said HLDI’s new findings about texting, together with the organization’s previous finding that hand-held phone bans didn’t reduce crashes,

call into question the way policymakers are trying to address the problem of distracted driving crashes. They’re focusing on a single manifestation of distracted driving and banning it. This ignores the endless sources of distraction and relies on banning one source or another to solve the whole problem.

In October 2008, I wrote:

The body of literature really seems to be pointing to a broader problem: driving while distracted – distractions coming from many sources. Some papers (for example and this example) refer to distractions caused by being engaged in conversations – even those with someone else in the car.

… Does this raise questions about whether legislation that targets only mobile phone use is missing the mark?

Driving while texting legislation may be popular with voters, but did it really accomplish what was promised?

Along these same lines, I continue to question the efficacy of the current anti-spam legislation. Will it really stop the garbage coming from bad guys, or simply increase costs for legitimate business?