Amid lingering criticism and doubts about the feasibility of enforcement, Californians braced for new legislation taking effect in January that will ban almost all handling of cellphones behind the wheel.

Beginning Sunday, law enforcement will be authorized to punish drivers using the devices in accordance with Assembly Bill 1785, authored by Assemblyman Bill Quirk, D-Hayward. “The whole idea is you don’t have the phone in your hand, period,” he told the Sacramento Bee.  

Quirk’s bill, AB1785, plugged what safety officials called a major loophole in the state’s groundbreaking hands-free cellphone laws. Those laws ban talking and texting on handheld phones while driving. But any other handheld use of a phone, such as shooting videos or scanning Facebook, has been technically legal.

Growing risk

Statistics have shown that smartphones make life on the road more dangerous. “The California Department of Motor Vehicles statistics show that in 2015 cellphone distractions while driving caused 12 fatal crashes, 500 injuries and 700 instances of property damage,” Rare observed. Even more recent information has painted a picture of Californians drifting steadily into risky routines. “In a study conducted by the California Office of Traffic Safety in April 2016, at least 12.8 percent of California drivers were observed using a mobile device during the day, up from 9.2 percent in 2015 and eclipsing the previous high of 10.8 percent in 2013,” according to the Turlock Journal. “Due to the difficulty of observing mobile device use in a vehicle, these figures are considered minimums, with actual usage likely several points higher.”

“The OTS study also found that the observed usage rates appear to confirm previous studies, which show more drivers admit to using mobile devices “sometimes” or “regularly” and that fewer drivers believe that talking or texting on a cellphone is a major safety problem. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who say they have been hit or nearly hit by a driver using a cellphone remains steady at nearly 60 percent.”

Although a culture of keeping one eye on the phone and one eye on the road has spread, drivers have not embraced the trend simply for the sake of travel entertainment. Even with GPS, apps have not eliminated the need for basic interactive tasks like following directions, leaving Golden State drivers at risk of citation simply for using their phones as if they were maps. “If you are using your cellphone for directions, it must be placed on the dashboard or windshield of your car,” as the Kern Golden Empire warned. 

Judgment calls

The fines promised to sting multiple industries reliant on drivers legally monitoring and interacting with their smartphones over the course of their daily drives. AB1785 did leave a carveout with affected businesses in mind, allowing motorists to “activate or deactivate a feature or function” of their devices “with the motion of a single swipe or tap of the driver’s finger.” But the narrow rule left many puzzled as to what possible constituency would find the carveout sufficient. “How does a cop distinguish between texting, which you can’t do, and activating or deactivating a feature or function, which you can?” asked the LA Weekly’s Dennis Romero. “Judges will love this law.” Ironically, the number of citations being dismissed in court under the old rules provided an argument in favor of passing AB1785.

Perhaps the gray area surrounding enforcement contributed to the relatively modest size of the fines imposed by the law. “Violators will be subject to a $20 fine for the first offense, with fines going up for additional offenses,” CBS San Francisco reported. But California Highway Patrol Officer Rodney Fitzhugh told ABC 10 “the cost of the ticket is up to the courts and local jurisdictions.”

Here’s yet another outrage from our “public” school system: GPS systems for kids who play hooky. I thought the 13th Amendment abolished slavery. Reports the Orange County Register:

ANAHEIM – Frustrated by students habitually skipping class, police and school officials in Anaheim are turning to GPS tracking to ensure they come to class.

The Anaheim Union High School District is the first in California to test Global Positioning System technology as part of a six-week pilot program that began last week, officials said.

Seventh- and eighth-graders with four unexcused absences or more this school year are assigned to carry a handheld GPS device, about the size of a cell phone.

They aren’t strapping the Stasi-devices to the kids — yet. Explains another Register article:

Miller Sylvan, regional director of the firm helping with the GPS program, talked about tracking chronically truant students:

Q. Why don’t you just attach the GPS devices to the students?

A. We don’t want to criminalize the kids or have them wear any bracelet or something around their ankle that would stigmatize them. The students are frequently entering a code and interacting with the device, so we think it’s the best way to let them carry it….

Q. Why do the students have to enter a code when it’s a GPS device that could track them at any time?

A. We want the students to be interactive with the device and take steps to let us know where they are. That helps teach them the discipline they need to be responsible. It gets them thinking about their schedule.

Get that? Discipline means following orders.

As technology improves, you can bet they’ll implant the Stasi-devices in the kids’ bodies.

Does anybody need any more explanation about why government schools really are prisons?

And the schools always blame the kids and parents, instead of blaming the school system. Consider that Anaheim High School, with 3262 students the biggest in this district,  scored an abysmal 699 (out of 1,000) on the 2009-10 API Growth measure. Could it be the kids are skipping school because it’s boring and dumb?

Like government-run schools themselves, the GPS tyranny is a way to indoctrinate young Americans into dutifully following orders in a tyrannical system.

We don’t need to “reform” this edu-fascist system, but to abolish it. Dissolve all government-run schools and repeal truancy laws. Doing so also would solve our state budget problems. How will parents pay for schooling? They could home-school. And we’ll cut their taxes so they can afford private or parochial schools.

But even letting kids roam the streets would be better than making them carry GPS spy devices.

Free the children!

Feb. 17, 2011