Cell Phone Ban Challenged by Insurance Group

CNN Money has an article that seems to support our position that a law or regulation is meaningless unless it can be enforced:

Cell phone bans, such as those recently recommended by the National Transportation Safety Board, have so far proven useless when it comes to actually reducing car crashes, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The Insurance Institute is a private group financed by auto insurers. The National Transportation Safety Board recently recommended that states adopt strict rules banning all non-driving-related use of hand-held devices such as cell phones - even hands-free - while driving.

Many states already have bans on hand-held cell phone use and on texting while driving. The Insurance Institute has studied crash rates before and after bans were enacted in various states and also compared them to crash rates in nearby states with no such bans.

While the bans have resulted in actual reductions in phone use, they have not resulted in any reduction in crash rates, according to the Institute.

The Institute found similar results from bans on text messaging while driving. In fact, in a strange twist, texting bans actually resulted in more crashes in several states, according to an IIHS study.

The lesson, Insurance Institute spokesman Russ Rader said, may be that cell phones aren't really the problem, drivers are....