George Korda

Tennessee law enforcement agencies have started issuing tickets to newly-minted lawbreakers: car drivers who hold their cell phones.

Fines are beginning to make their way to government coffers. A small number now, it will grow. It stimulates a question: Is there evidence whether such laws work? (Data on that subject can be found farther down).

The Tennessee law banning hand-held cell phones went into effect July 1. Drivers can eat, drink, converse, sing, look at roadside sights, talk to their kids in the back seat, and it’s all perfectly legal. Pick up a cell phone, however, and you’re a distracted-driving lawbreaker. Law enforcement and first responders, however, are exempt from the safety measure that the legislature and governor determined is required for Tennessee drivers.

At $50 per ticket, the Tennessee Highway Patrol’s cell phone ban enforcement netted, it would appear, a minimum of $21,200 for the 424 tickets the THP wrote in July, Knox News reported. Tickets increase up to $200 depending on the situation.

The THP promises to get even tougher on Volunteer State citizens, according to what the story says THP’s spokesman, Wes Moster, told Knox News: “The highway patrol is going relatively easy on drivers for now, but enforcement is likely to ramp up after August.

Cellphone ban: Everything you need to know about new Tennessee distracted driving law

A Republican dichotomy

That doesn’t count local law enforcement agencies’ ticket-writing under the banner of the law passed by the legislature, dominated by a Republican supermajority and signed into law by a Republican governor. This is though it’s Republicans who say every election cycle that they’re the ones standing in the gap between the people and ever-encroaching government.

State Sen. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains, voted against the ban and spoke against it on the senate floor. There are already laws against texting and distracted driving, he said.

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“If someone can’t drive down the road and talk to a passenger, then they can’t drive,” said Niceley. “What if you look at pretty scenery, a herd of cattle, or a new house. Anything. I think it might be the hands-free device people who pushed that bill.”

That’s an interesting observation.

There’s plenty of emotion surrounding the law. But is there hard, irrefutable, conclusive evidence that such laws really make a difference?

'Laws have not reduced accident rates'

National Public Radio in 2010 examined the issue, reporting on a Highway Loss Data Institute study that involved New York, the District of Columbia, Connecticut and California.

Said NPR: “Policymakers who have become increasingly concerned about drivers using cell phones now have a new worry: According to a study of four jurisdictions that have banned the use of hand-held devices while driving, the laws have not reduced accident rates.

“It found that month-to-month fluctuations in collision accident claims didn't change before and after cell phone bans took effect. Nor did accident patterns change compared with those in nearby states without cell phone bans,” (emphasis added).

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Four years later the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the HLDI issued “Status Report: Eyes on the Road, searching for answers to the problem of distracted driving.”

Naturally, there are warnings in the status report about the dangers of cell phone use, distractions, etc., But here’s the salient point with respect to bans: “Even though studies show that phone use by drivers has declined in states with bans, crashes reported to insurers haven’t gone down during the same period.”

There’s more: “More recently, NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) sponsored additional high-visibility enforcement demonstrations between November 2012 and June 2013 in California and Delaware. Both states ban driver use of hand-held cell phones and texting. Results, which were released in April, were inconclusive.”

'Statistics unclear' in study

Up North, the New Hampshire Legal Blog, from a law firm interestingly called Tenn and Tenn P.A., on July 9, 2019, asked the pertinent question: “Has the Hands Free Law Accomplished Anything?”

“Perhaps because of the difficulties in knowing for sure whether a crash was related to distracted driving, the New Hampshire Division of Motor Vehicles does not record such information in its record of fatal crashes in the state,” it said. “This leaves the statistics unclear related to two car accidents and distracted driving. Those records do, however, make it clear that the total number of crashes and fatalities has not decreased.”

Korda:Tennessee's new cellphone law is a bad connection

In Tennessee, the call is, as everywhere else such bans are enacted, about safety. However, without doubt, just about everyone who hails the cell phone ban routinely exceeds posted speed limits. How can that be, if they’re concerned with safety? Anyone who speeds – ever – is the last person to demand others not use cell phones.

Tennessee’s ban is the unfortunate combination of emotion and the demand that government “do something,” even when doing something accomplishes little or nothing.

There is one certainty on which we can all count, however: Law enforcement will be writing more tickets, and more Tennesseans will be paying fines.

Perhaps in this case it really is as simple as following the money.