The Asphalt Jungle

It was the mid-1980s, and I was lounging by the pool at my Luxury Ersatz Postmodern apartment complex, which looked exactly like a set from "Miami Vice" except it was in Michigan. Suddenly, a fellow cloud-worshipper on a nearby chaise reached into his goose-down parka and, with a flourish, pulled out...a cell-phone. A murmur arose from the pasty throng. Not only were cell-phones scarce back then, this guy's was clearly state-of-the-art: It was as small as Shaquille O'Neal's shoe and couldn't have weighed much more than a Cuisinart. We watched transfixed as he began to dial--who could it be? His agent in L.A.? His girlfriend in Monte Carlo? His tailor in Mayfair? He cleared his throat and began to speak--live from poolside! "Yeah, Schwartz's Hardware? Uh, you guys still having that sale on garden hose?"I've rarely heard a more important cell-phone conversation since.

The difference, of course, is that in the last 20 years cell-phones have become as popular as low-carb jelly donuts. There are roughly 150 million cell-phone subscribers in the U.S. alone, with the number climbing fast. Americans are doing more cell time than the Manson Family. And they're doing much of it while behind the wheel.

Here in Los Angeles, just stand on any street corner and watch the drivers roar past: phone, phone, phone, cheeseburger, phone, phone, Tom Clancy novel, phone. Indeed, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that, at any given moment of the day, 500,000 drivers of passenger vehicles are talking on handheld cell-phones. That's a lot of garden hose.

How do I know these roadgoing conversations are unimportant? Because 90 percent of the time the phoners are smiling. You can almost hear the inanity: "Whatcha doing? Nothing? Me neither. Just driving my SUV at 50 mph down a sidewalk full of screaming shoppers. Hey, wasn't Leonardo DiCaprio just so great in...whoops! A palm tree just jumped out and bit my car. Hang on while I get my personal-injury lawyer on the other line."

I blame much of the problem on cut-rate air time. If cell-phones cost $20 a minute, drivers would sooner walk over hot coals than use one ("Trapped in giant sinkhole. Request police and large crane. Fourth and Main. Don't call me back!"). Instead, people have no incentive not to jaw away their hours at the wheel. Imagine if restaurants started offering easy-access, super-cheap food at every intersection in America. Why, the population would quickly overeat, health problems would skyrocket, obesity would become a national epidemic, and...oh, wait.

Having said all that, I'm against banning handheld cell-phones in cars. Police have better things to do than enforce such an unenforceable law (in states like New Jersey, which has a hand-held ban, many motorists flagrantly ignore the rule). Nor are hands-free devices the answer. It's the act of talking on the phone, not the method of doing it, that makes for the dangerous distraction. If anything, headsets should be banned simply because it should be illegal to drive around looking like a play-by-play announcer on "Monday Night Football."

Cell-phones are undoubtedly a party to many horrific accidents and a whole lot of really pathetic driving, but the bottom line is they're just another diversion--like changing CDs, programming the GPS, reading the paper, or feeding the Shih Tzu--that short-circuits the RAM of imprudent drivers who instead should be focusing their brainpower on the critical vehicular tasks at hand. Cell-phone bans will never work when drivers can't even exercise common sense. The solution is so simple. Maybe you've even seen the movie: "Eyes Wide Mouth Shut."