In the old days, when you suffered a sudden tragic death in the family, you had a wake, a funeral, then an Irish Wake to overcome the vale of tears. You remained hopeful for the afterlife.
Now, all too often, an accidental death is followed by a campaign by the family to pass a new law that reduces the personal freedom of people who played no role in the death.
Such is the new anti-texting while driving craze.
Why are people who want the state to use force against innocent third parties considered to be heroes? Frankly, I am tired of it.
Folks, your family member was killed because someone was driving stupidly. Someone was not concentrating on what they were doing. If you want to stop needless deaths, do something to encourage better concentration among people.
There are other problems with this that I will simply hint at. First, it is based on the fallacy of utopianism, the notion that the government, with its limited range of tools—actually, its only tool, force—can improve human life, by passing more laws. Again, no law ever improved anyone’s IQ, concern for others, or ability to focus on the task at hand.
Second, the law opens the door to virtually unlimited regulation of personal freedom. Once you get beyond the rules of the road, that is, how your vehicle is moving through traffic, and move to regulating the infinite number of factors that might lead to an accident, you remove any limit on the state’s power under road socialism to reduce freedom in the name of traffic safety.
Third, it is virtually impossible to prove that these kinds of laws work. We greatly overestimate our ability to figure things like this out. My belief is that cell phone use, for example, reduces accidents. Certainly, accidents went down while cell phone use proliferated. Give me a million dollars and I will try to prove my controversial thesis.
6:51 am on October 23, 2009
