You really do need to read the fine print. To casually browse the Oregonian this morning, where the above-fold front page was dominated by a story on cell phone regulation, the impression you'd get would be fairly black/white: Cell advocates on one side, and the people who'd like to ban them altogether from the ranks of drivers on the other.
The actual legislative debate turns out to be a good deal more nuanced. And, in our view, more realistic.
A bunch of proposed pieces of legislation have been drafted, but the Oregon Senate Judiciary Committee seems to have boiled down the live prospects to two. It held a hearing on them this afternoon.
The less interesting of the two is Senate Bill 293, which disallows drivers (while driving, of course) from using a hand-held cell phone, though "hands free" use (with a headset or the equivalent) would still be allowed. It's similar to an effort now underway in Washington. This has the fell of a compromise position, and maybe it is, though the committee was told about several series of studies that show no better driving skills for users of hands-free compared to hand-held. (Did any of those studies compare concentration impairment from cell phone conversations against in-car passenger conversations? We'd be fascinated to see any such results, but we've heard of none; implicitly, we suspect one kind of conversation is about as distracting as the other. If so, do we see a proposal to ban car-pooling next?)
The other bill, which is the one backed by the Oregon State Police, seems more interesting, and also more subtle.
