#503 Nother Chance

We live in a give people another chance society. You know, if at first you don’t succeed we’ll let you try try again. Maybe it’s our compassionate capacity to warn and warn but never actually discipline. Like the supposedly last drop-dead date for passing the WASL and how we have once again extended that date. I think we need to rethink the WASL. I think, as one astute observer put it, that to try to assess 12 years in one pencil and paper test is a little overreaching. But I also think that as parents we shouldn’t draw lines unless we intend to keep them drawn. Every parent knows, if you train your kids to expect a second chance, they’ll never try to do it right the first time. Laws probably ought to mean something or why bother. I guess. Sort of.
So it is with the recent cellphone law passed for adults. There has been quite the hue and cry about cellphone abuse; accidents caused on the road because oblivious cellphoners are plowing into innocent old ladies in crumplable Caprices. The voting public wants the legislators to do something about cellphone abuse. The same voting public, unfortunately, that’s abusing cellphones. So the legislature, in its infinite capacity to waffle, has passed a law even more toothless than the elderly victims. If it can be proved that a cellphone was being used during the time of the accident, and you’re holding the cellphone, you’re busted. Or if you’re pulled over for another infraction and you are holding a cellphone you’re busted. It’s a secondary infraction, like with seatbelts. You have to be pulled over for something else first, like you cut off some slowpoke old lady in the merge lane, or you backed into someone in the parking lot. Then, and only if the copper sees you with a cellphone in your hand, can you be busted for cellphone abuse. Oh yeah, one more thing. You have to be terminally stupid enough not to drop your cellphone on the seat first. “Drop the cellphone and come out with your hands up!”
America, ya gotta love it