Tobacco Road

A New Jersey legislator has proposed a law banning smoking while driving.

Assemblyman John F. McKeon, D-West Orange, sponsored a measure that would fine drivers up to $250 if they are found smoking while driving.

McKeon, a tobacco opponent whose father died of emphysema, cited a AAA-sponsored study on driver distractions in which the association found that of 32,000 accidents linked to distraction, one percent were related to smoking.

Actually 0.9%, but let's not quibble over a 10% exageration. 

A look at the actual study shows just what kind of knucklehead McKeon is, and by extension just what kind of knuckleheads a lot of busybody do-gooders are.  Let's examine the numbers.

McKeon bases his crusade on one study showing that smoking causes 0.9% of distraction-related traffic accidents.  There are 32,000 distraction-related accidents a year nationwide.  1% of 32,000 accidents is 320 accidents a year, the vast majority of them certainly minor.  New Jersey's population,  according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is about 8.6 million, or 3% of the nation's population.  Assuming that New Jersey consumes only it's share of traffic accidents and no more, to prevent 10 minor accidents a year Assemblyman McKeon believes that police should take time away from investigating murders and chasing down drunk drivers to pass out tickets to people smoking in their own cars.

Assemblyman McKeon is a boob.

The real threat to driver safety is not smoking, everyone knows, but cell phones.  There's not a right-thinking American anywhere who doesn't favor the ban on talking on a cell phone while driving.  Yeah, well, the AAA study concludes that  cell phones account for a mere 1.5% of distraction-related accidents -- which are themselves 25% of all accidents.  Doing the math, that means that cell phones account for not quite 0.375% of all traffic accidents, or about 1,000 accidents a year.  Again, most of them are minor.  All the same, with something like 250 million autos in the U.S., the apparently appalling 1-in-280,000 chance that your own personal automobile will be in a cell phone-related accident is too much for us, as a society, to bear.

There are, of course, behaviors that no one is threatening to legislate against.  For example, I am unaware of pending legislation that would ban automobile air conditioning.  According to the AAA study, 2.8% of distraction-related accidents happened while one of the drivers was fiddling with his climate controls.  That's three times as many accidents as caused by smoking, but I'm guessing even non-smokers like Assemblyman McKeon enjoy a good blast of cool air now and then, so they're not concerned how dangerous their own habits are.

The Big Kahuna of terrifying automotive bahavior is adjusting the car stereo.  By banning sound systems, Assemblyman McKeon could eliminate 11.4% of the distraction-related accidents.  Then he could go after those destructive people who carry passengers, since 10% of distraction-related accidents are caused when someone in the car -- often a child -- distracts the driver.  Perhaps we could ban children.

The most effective means of eliminating auto accidents would be to elminate autos.  That one small measure would cut auto fatalities nearly 100%.  (Not quite 100%.  Every year, a few people die when jacked-up cars fall on them.)  Let's see if Assemblyman McKeon can get behind that.

Comments

[Charlie Gordon]

This demonstrates what is sorely lacking in society today; some common sense. Everything is done by knee-jerk, emotional reaction. Smoking causes accidents, therefore we must ban smoking while driving. Never mind that the number of accidents is so small as to be laughable.