Legislating Intelligence

It was predicted that Italians would ignore the new law, just as they generally fail to use seat belts, but they are (grumblingly) complying, not least because the police have been strict and the fines painful. In one stroke, an internationally recognized symbol of Italian flair and dolce far niente has been obliterated.

On the face of it, a helmet law is simply common sense. Whether it will reduce the notorious recklessness of Italian motor scooter operators, however, remains to be seen. Driving in a few regions of Italy this summer, one thought one detected the opposite effect: with the enhanced safety of their new helmets, scooter operators seemed to be indulging in even more dangerous and foolhardy behavior than ever. This may have been a short-term effect, and the evidence was entirely anecdotal, but it does suggest a universal law of human behavior: A certain percentage of humans are dumbasses, who will always find ways to foil any effort by the state to legislate their behavior for their own good or anyone else's.

Last week, lawmakers in Suffolk County and in the New Jersey borough of Carteret voted to ban the use of a handheld cellphone while operating a motor vehicle. Since a town in Ohio enacted the first such law last spring, a handful of local governments have followed suit, and many states have considered some action. More than a dozen nations have passed such a law?including Italy, where one has seen it flouted as routinely as seat belt regulations. New York City cabbies similarly disobey a 1999 TLC order.

No doubt the locals on the Suffolk County legislature were at least partly motivated by an opportunity to discommode the hordes of obnoxious New Yorkers who infest the Hamptons every year with their SUVs and their incessant cell use. (The Jitney management was forced to institute a strict limitation on cell use while en route.) Nonetheless, like helmet laws, a ban on gabbing while driving would seem to be common sense. The Suffolk legislators cited a 1997 Canadian study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that driving while blabbing is nearly as hazardous as driving while drunk. This is easily believed in New York, where so many cellphone users seem incapable of showing good sense simply while walking or sitting in a theater, let alone behind the wheel of a motor vehicle.

New York Press went on record with our contempt for egregious public cellphone use years ago, well before the device reached its current ubiquity, and we'll be delighted when levels of flagrantly uncivil public usage recede back to those halcyon days. (And they will. Like rollerblades, once every dumbass in the city is on a cell, flaunting it will become embarrassingly gauche.) Still, we remain skeptical of all attempts to legislate intelligence. Reckless driving is already illegal. Can we expect specific laws against eating, arguing with one's children and singing along to loud music while driving? Would a flurry of such new laws make the highways and byways of Suffolk County less dangerous on busy summer nights? We're doubtful.