Instapundit on Possible Talking-While-Driving Ban: Prohibit Tailgating Instead

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit writes about the National Transportation Safety Board's bizarre recommendation to prohibit non-emergency use of cell phones while driving:

Despite the focus on texting as a cause of this particular accident, and on this accident as purported evidence that drivers should be banned from using portable devices, NTSB's own report shows that the drivers involved in this scary wreck were involved because of driver inattention having nothing to do with cellphones, texting, or any other personal electronic devices. It was just the old-fashioned kind of driver inattention that has caused most accidents since the beginning of the automobile age, and that could have been prevented by a little attention to proper following distance and the road ahead….

Yet the No. 1 recommendation of the NTSB to the states is to "ban the nonemergency use of portable electronic devices (other than those designed to support the driving task) for all drivers." This selective focus suggests an agenda, and certainly those of us who have been paying attention to the various pronouncements coming from the NTSB and other highway-safety advocates have noticed a strain of hostility to cellphones and other devices for quite some time, despite a paucity of evidence suggesting that such devices are especially dangerous.

Read whole thing in Popular Mechanics.

Elsewhere, former Reasoner Radley Balko says the proposed laws "are about symbolism."