On Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:06:15 -0600, Robert Neville
wrote:

Charles Ellson wrote:

The trouble with that is that it opens the door to defendants claiming
that it [using a telephone] was not unsafe in their individual case
and requires case law of the necessary nature to disprove every such
claim. The current law now addresses a specific improper action with
common undesirable consequences and takes away the argument

The problem with banning one specific behavior is that it's an unsustainable
approach to treating the sypmtom, not the problem. By your logic, we should have
- driving while eating

Something which I mentioned as it involves use of older less-specific
legislation which appears to be applied in questionable circumstances.

- driving while applying makeup

Well established as an unsafe and illegal practice.

- driving while talking to a child in the back seat

The same as eating, it is not inevitably unsafe.

- and on and on and on...

Even assuming that all possible bad behaviors could be defined (a logical
impossibility),

They are generally defined by case law which provides various tests
for alleged offending behaviour to determine at the least to see if a
driver is devoting the amount of care and attention due in the
prevailing circumstances.

the delays in getting laws to prohibit each such behavior would
put you in a permanent catchup mode.

It is done when a particular action becomes a common nuisance with no
real excuse or defence and is far from new; defining a particular form
of bad behaviour as a specific offence takes away the opportunity to
argue that existing law fails to define it as bad due to some small
detail but usually still leaves room to argue that there was a "lawful
excuse or authority". It is not necessary for most poor driving
behaviour which fits unarguably within the broad definitions of the
various degrees of bad driving behaviour; in most cases prosecutions
will be the result of a self-evident lack of proper control of the
vehicle but use of telephones (like the prohibition on having a
television within sight of a driver) deals with the cause not the
ensuing accident.