Cell Phone Law
As most teenagers should know, there is a new law speci€cally tar-geting 16 and
17 year old drivers. It was passed in the last legislative session and of€cially
became a law on January 1, 2006. This new law states that any ‘new teen
driver’ i.e. and driver under 18, caught using their cell phone while driving
would be subject to a €ne and a moving violation on their driving record. The
€ne can be up to one hundred dollars, but consider this; when your insurance
company €nds out about it, your ‘safe driver’ status could be revoked
and your insurance pay-ments would increase, making the consequences more expensive
and longer lasting than a simple on the spot €ne.
Many teens have mixed feelings about this law-while most can grudg-ingly agree
that a cell phone non-use law would be a good idea. Many also agree without hesitation
that this law is discriminatory towards teens, and this editorial board agrees.
We feel that this law could have been a good idea, but that the government faltered
when they decided to apply it only to 16 and 17 year old drivers. It’s
suspected that the rationale behind that decision is simple; there have been
many discus-sions about how dangerous cell phone usage while driving is, and
some clamoring for a law limiting or banning the use of a cell phone while driving
in recent years. So, the legislature effectively placated the people seeking
a cell phone use restriction, while managing to not offend or inconvenience the
voting public. Beyond that, it is true that teenage drivers are involved in a
larger number of accidents compared to the comparatively small number of drivers
in the demographic.
There are a few arguments that can be made that support teens’ call for
an all-encompassing cell phone restriction law. First and foremost, we feel that
anyone using a cell phone while driving is a distracted, and therefore unsafe
driver, regardless of age or experience driving, Secondly, we feel that if the
restriction is going to apply only to statis-tically unsafe demographics, we
feel that it should also apply to the ‘ really old’ drivers, not
just the ‘ new teen’ drivers. It’s been proven that older drivers
have a slower reaction time due to either health problems or just the natural
aging process. Their slow reaction time cancels out their experience, and should
also qualify them for being ticketed for cell phone use while driving. Since
far less older drivers than teens use cell phones, especially while driving,
it shouldn’t cause too much a problem. We also question how effectively
this law will be enforced-and how does police of€cers determine whether a person
is 16 or 18? 17 or 21? How does a police of€cer determine whether to look for
the €ends us-ing cell phone while driving, or the potentially more dangerous
people driving 40 miles over the speed limit and cutting off other cars?
There is a small silver lining for teenagers using cell phones while behind the
wheel; the law does stipulate that if it’s an emergency, go ahead and use
the cell phone while driving. This does raise the ques-tion of what an emergency
is in the eyes of the law. Unfortunately, that was not satisfactorily answered
in the documents available that de€ne this law. Is it acceptable to call someone
on the freeway and ask which exit you need, instead of pulling off at the €rst
exit, €nding a place to pull over, and then €nding out and re-entering the freeway?
Or is that a not acceptable use of the cell phone? In the end, teenagers would
be a lot less chagrined by this new law if it was for everyone and not just suspiciously
applied to teenagers who aren’t old enough to vote.
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St.
Paul Public School System, District #625