It’s coming up on a quarter-century since the newest form of cellphone technology became quite the rage. For a while, it had been limited to just a small number of people, and the cumbersome phones looked like a full-sized Army walkie-talkie, with usage plans costing around $8 a minute.
Suddenly, it was the Wild West. People were using them in all kinds of places and situations where common sense, decency and/or safety concerns should have precluded their use.
Technology had outpaced all those concerns, but there was still hope. There could be legal remedies, common-sense laws passed (probably unanimously) that would serve as a deterrence for those who might think about putting their own selfish whims ahead of the safety concerns of their fellow drivers and provide punishment for those who refused to be deterred.
But a (not-so-) funny thing happened. Lawmakers all over the country shirked their responsibility to provide for the common good and instead sided with the selfish. You see, state legislators consider themselves to be important, and, therefore, everything they do is important. Every phone call they make to lobbyists, sucking up for more money, is important, even if you’re holding on to the phone with one hand and (distractedly) trying to steer through rush-hour traffic with the other.
All over the country, people were losing their lives because of the (should have been) criminal actions of those who insisted on talking on the phone while driving. Here in Southern Arizona, a woman was killed, leaving her widowed husband to raise their two young daughters without a mom. And still, legislators refused to act. When pressed, they would often spout platitudes about civil liberties.
After years of needless carnage, legislative bodies began to act. First municipalities and then states started passing laws making it a crime to talk on the phone while driving. The laws came far too late (sadly, Arizona was the 48th state to pass such a law, but only after several deaths, including that of two law officers, a retired firefighter, and a 16-year-old girl, all killed by people using their phones while driving).
Texas was the 47th state to do so. It came after a driver who was texting crossed over into oncoming traffic and crashed into a minibus, killing 13 church members who were on a group outing.
Back in those days, the late Emil Franzi and I used to do a weekly political talk-radio show. Emil was an industrial-strength Libertarian, but even he had had too many close calls with butthole drivers on their cellphones. He wanted serious laws with serious consequences for the selfish and dangerous people who didn’t have the decency to just hang up and drive.
One time, we had on as one of our guests the then-sheriff of Pima County, Clarence Dupnik. Emil mentioned that he had nearly been sideswiped by a deputy who was driving and talking on the phone. Dupnik was taken aback and stated flatly that his deputies had strict orders not to talk on the phone while driving. If they needed to make a call, they should pull over and do so safely. He wanted his deputies to set a good example for the general public.
I thought that was cool. But, a couple weeks later, I was driving east on River Road, just past Thornydale. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw a sheriff’s vehicle coming up pretty fast. (Everybody drives too fast on River.) The vehicle came up on me fast, swerved into the “slow” lane, accelerated past me, then suddenly swerved in front of me, crossing over two lanes to get in the lane in which the driver could turn north onto Shannon.
We both had to stop for a red light. I looked over into the vehicle and saw that the deputy was talking on a cellphone. I rolled down my window and shouted, “Get off the phone!” He did a double-take, rolled down his window, and said, “What?!”
I repeated what I had said, with just a tad more emphasis. Then he, summoning all of the hubris that a badge can provide, said, “You wanna try that again?”
So I said, “Um … get off the phone …bitch!”
I remember thinking, “Please pull me over! Please pull me over! I know Clarence Dupnik.” But when the light changed, he turned left and headed north on Shannon. I got his vehicle number and ratted him out to Dupnik, anyway.
Around that same time, Emil and I were talking by phone on the air with the most vocal of all opponents to such a law. He prattled on about civil liberties. I finally asked him how many amendments there are to the Constitution, that beloved document that he tries to hide behind. More talk about personal freedom.
Emil said, “Obviously, you don’t know that there are 26 Amendments.”
“Of course, I know that!” he bellowed.
“Well,” Emil said, “that’s funny, because there are 27.” Then we hung up on him. (He’s now in Congress.)
That fight took too long and cost people their lives. And while the death of even one human being should never be trivialized, we as a society are now facing another fight over cellphones, one which, if poorly fought, could cost us an entire generation.
More on this next time.
