Making driving safer, 1% at a time.

[E. Blackadder]

I've seen a lot of local politics. Usually it's stupid, but not so stupid as to be outright laughable in a just world. But I live in Jersey, where a scandal-tainted governor can announce a three-month-delayed resignation, yet avoid any semblance of a vote on his replacement; where a US Senate campaigner can be switched off the ballot for another for no reason that he would likely lose, and in obvious violation of state law.

So it's no surprise that someone's come up with the idea of fining people who smoke while driving. The AAA has concluded (OK, sponsored and played up a survey) that 1% of accidents are "smoking related", so obviously smokers should be fined up to $250, if they're behind the wheel.

Noting the survey, one could conclude that it woud make much more sense to : Ban multiple occupants in automoobile, especially moving ones; ban radios and other entertainment players, adjustable climate controls, and eating. Perhaps eaters could be treated like Ansche Hedgepath. Towing and impounding the car would simply be icing on the cake.

For those of the link-impaired persuasion

Originally Posted by MSNBC

TRENTON, N.J. - Ashtrays have been disappearing in cars like fins on Cadillacs, and so could smoking while driving in New Jersey, under a measure introduced in the Legislature.

Although the measure faces long odds, it still has smokers incensed and arguing it’s a Big Brother intrusion that threatens to take away one of the few places they can enjoy their habit.

“The day a politician wants to tell me I can’t smoke in my car, that’s the day he takes over my lease payments,” said John Cito, a financial planner from Hackensack with a taste for $20 cigars.

Those cigars, pipes and cigarettes would become no-nos for drivers. Offenders would be stung with a fine of up to $250, under the measure, whose sponsor said it’s designed more to improve highway safety than protect health.

Some states, including New Jersey, have considered putting the brakes on smoking while children are in the car. But none have gone for an outright ban on smoking while driving, according to Washington, D.C.-based Action on Smoking and Health, the country’s oldest anti-tobacco organization.

Smokers, feeling like easy targets, say enough already. They argue they’ve been forced outside office buildings, run off the grounds of public facilities, and asked to pony up more in per-pack excise taxes when states feel a budget squeeze.

“With smoking, it’s becoming increasingly fashionable to target legislation or prohibitions,” said George Koodray, a member of the Metropolitan Cigar Society, a 100-strong group that meets in Paterson for dinner and a smoke.

Distracted drivers
Assemblyman John McKeon, a tobacco opponent whose father died of emphysema, sponsored the legislation. He cites a AAA-sponsored study on driver distractions in which the automobile association found that of 32,000 accidents linked to distraction, 1 percent were related to smoking.

The measure, co-sponsored by Assemblywoman Lorretta Weinberg, a fellow Democrat, was introduced last month just before lawmakers’ summer break. It faces some improbable odds for passing.

Some lawmakers may fear the bill is frivolous compared with more pressing issues like taxes, said political analyst David Rebovich.

And there’s this to consider: Traffic safety groups acknowledge motorists now widely ignore the state’s year-old law against using hand-held cell phones, so why would smoking be any different?

Mitchell Sklar, of the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police, said police departments may balk at enforcing such a law. “In general, we’d rather not try to incrementally look at every single behavior and make those a violation,” he said.

Originally Posted by Bloomberg

Last year, for example, [John G. Roberts, Jr.] wrote an opinion rejecting the civil rights claims of 12-year-old Ansche Hedgepeth, who was arrested, searched, handcuffed, booked, and detained by police for eating a single french fry in a subway station in violation of D.C. law. Although an adult committing the same infraction would have received only a citation under D.C. law, Roberts said the police's treatment of Hedgepeth served the "goal of promoting parental awareness and involvement with children who commit delinquent acts.''