[pubstik]

Pools kill many people a year, mostly children, but we don't close them because the risk is severly outweighed by their utility. I think your argument is overall sound, but you need to find some better examples that apply. If we really were so outraged about auto deatus we would be clamoring for anti-screen enforcement, which has a larger effect on deaths than drunk driving, street racing, and all gun crime combined.

[zdragnar]

To be fair, states are starting to ban using non-hands-free phones.

One curious point is that, in a neighboring state, the fine is extremely small. However, insurance companies are treating such citations as a similar risk to having a DWI/DUI citation; construction workers and other drivers are already having a hard time getting hired because their record of having been pulled over for usinga phone makes them too expensive for employers to insure for company vehicles.

[dsfyu404ed]

> However, insurance companies are treating such citations as a similar risk to having a DWI/DUI citation;

Insurers have a strong financial incentive to have "mass market" infractions that don't really tell you anything about someone's risk in the highest category in any state that uses a points system because the points system provides a "we're all gonna charge these people more" pact with the other insurers and they can get the actual violation data they use for risk assessment in other ways (usually straight from the DMV's api).

I'm not defending phone usage but I think anyone with an IQ above freezing can see that the average instance of it (which around here is people texting at red lights) is not as big of a risk indicator as a DUI citation.

[zdragnar]

in this case I am just relaying what I heard from some owners of construction / remodelling companies; drivers / workers with a citation for phone use had to pay either 50 or $125 or something along those lines, but were finding out that employers could not or would not hire them due to the insurance costs as a result. Just an anecdote, but I have not known my source to make such stories up (and it would have been strange to do so in the context of the conversation anyway).