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CNN Crossfire
Car Safety or Big Brother?
Aired June 26, 2001 - 19:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL PRESS, CO-HOST: Good evening. Welcome to CROSSFIRE.
Hold the phone! No, don't hold the phone! Not while driving. Not if you're in New York state. Or, starting November 1, you'll be breaking the law and might have to pay a $100 fine.
With little debate, a bill banning handheld cell phones if you're behind the wheel passed the state legislature last night. Governor Pataki says he will sign it. But if New York's the first, it might not be the last state to crack down on cell phones. Similar measures are under consideration in 41 other states. And Congressman Gary Ackerman, tonight's guest, has introduced legislation for a national ban.
Is this an important step to cut down distractions and save lives on our highways? Or is it one more blow to individual freedom and one more power trip for big brother -- Bob?
ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: Congressman Ackerman, welcome.
REP. GARY ACKERMAN (D), NEW YORK: Thank you.
NOVAK: I know anybody who has ever been to New York City thinks you New Yorkers are crazy, you don't know how to drive, you swerve around -- it is dangerous. But why are you trying to impose your insecurities on the rest of the country?
ACKERMAN: Well, if you take a look at all the polling that has been done, including a CNN poll, 70 percent of all of the American people favor a ban on the use of cell phone while driving the car. It's a major distraction. And if you have been in back of a driver or next to a driver with a cell phone, you know what I mean.
PRESS: Fred Smith, latest study I saw showed that someone using a handheld cell phone is four times more likely to get in an accident that someone who's got both hands on the wheel. That's as bad as someone who is driving drunk. Isn't this the one time that even you can support a government regulation?
FRED SMITH, COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: Good try, but not this time either. It turns out that the same types of polls that we all seem to believe in this city have found out that of the many distractions that occur driving, cell phones are way down the list. Basically, we're dealing with an issue where cell phones, unlike the other distractions, that pet monkey we were hearing about earlier or the thing in the back seat, cell phones have safety offsets. They create risk, they offset risk. Because if you are being stopped in an automobile, you don't want to stop the car to be able to call for help.
ACKERMAN: A 110 million people have cell phones, not many people have pet monkeys, that's the problem.
(CROSSTALK)
ACKERMAN: There is no technology that pets your monkey for you, but there is technology so that you can talk while driving without taking your hands off the wheel, and that's what we should be looking at.
NOVAK: I don't have a pet monkey, but I do have...
ACKERMAN: A pet peeve.
(CROSSTALK)
NOVAK: I won't get into that. I have an electric razor, and since times -- since sometimes when I'm over on my way to the studio, my Corvette burning gas, and with the top down...
PRESS: And the air conditioner on.
NOVAK: No, top down, I take my electric razor, steering through Washington traffic with my left hand and I shave. Now, would you like to get a law passed in Congress that in the District of Columbia shaving while you're driving is illegal?
ACKERMAN: I think in your case we would let you do whatever you want when you're behind the wheel. But I have been behind you, and I have seen you doing that shaving thing while have a slice of pizza in the other hand and steering with your left...
(CROSSTALK)
NOVAK: ... why don't you censure it, why don't you legislate against that?
ACKERMAN: Because there is no technology whereby you can get around any of those things. There is technology, very simple, very inexpensive, handheld devices are as cheap as $10 and less today, and that would allow people at least to keep both hands on the wheel -- while still being distracted by the cell phone, but it cuts down quite a...
NOVAK: Well, that's an amazing piece of logic, because you can't do it safely while you're shaving, you can't legislate. But I want to back up what Fred said from data by University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center. Driving distractions: things outside the car, 29.4 percent; adjusting radio, 11 percent; another person in car, almost 11 percent; moving objects in car, 4 percent; another object in car, almost 3 percent; adjusting climate controls, 2.8 percent; eating or drinking, 1.7 percent; using a cell phone 1.5 percent. It's the least big problem and you busybodies are just attacking it because it's there.
ACKERMAN: No. First of all, almost all the surveys that are coming out now are based on data taken between 1997 and 1999. The amount of -- the number of cell phones in use has quadrupled, and a lot of people just don't like to admit that they are on the cell phone. All of the latest studies that are coming out indicate that it is a major distraction. You got to take your eyes off the road, you got to take your ears off of listening to traffic, you have to take your hand off the wheel, and your concentration, which is supposed to be on driving, is somewhere else.
PRESS: Fred, let's come back here to where this all comes from. And believe it or not, this legislation does not come from busybodies who are just looking for things to do. The legislation comes from surviving family members, where they have been victims killed by a driver who was on the cell phone. "The New York Times" talked a couple of months ago about a woman by the name of Mardy Burns (sic), out of Independence, Missouri. Her 18-year-old daughter and her boyfriend killed by 17-year-old who was yakking away on the cell phone, doesn't know what the hell he's doing, runs into them, kills them both.
This famous model Niki Taylor got out of the hospital today. She's been in the hospital for two months with injuries that she sustained when her -- the guy driving her car, cell phone goes off, and he's down there looking for the cell phone and runs into a utility pole. I mean, you cannot deny that these things are a distraction, they are a danger. So, I mean, isn't this important just for the lives that it will save on the road?
SMITH: Bill, you are making a mistake that almost all people make from the liberal side. Good antidotes make bad law. Basically, what you've done is ignored the data that Bob just gave us, that of all the distractions, this is a minor distraction -- even though a growing one, certainly the congressman tried -- what you're basically dealing with is something which in Europe now is called the precautionary principal: worry about the new, the novel.
We don't worry about the person driving with us, we don't worry about the thing in the back seat, we don't worry about the radio or climate control. We worry about the new thing, forgetting the fact that those other conveniences in the automobile have offset inconveniences. The cell telephone has offsetting safety value because if you are driving that car and somebody is chasing you, you don't want to...
ACKERMAN: We make an exception in the bill for any kind of emergency that anybody can...
SMITH: Wonderful. ACKERMAN: And what you consider a minor distraction rises to the level of drunk driving. You are just against government regulations! I think your organization was against helmets...
NOVAK: Guilty! Guilty!
ACKERMAN: ... helmets on motorcycles, seatbelts we put on...
SMITH: Congressman, we have a tremendous skepticism about the ability of government who says I'm from Washington, I want to help you. We basically believe that people want to have safer lives, and they make tradeoffs between the risk of cell phones and the risk of not having a cell phone.
(CROSSTALK)
ACKERMAN: People want to have a safer life, and they understand common sense, but yet -- and they know they shouldn't murder people, yet we need a law that prevents that from happening.
SMITH: We need laws...
ACKERMAN: They know they should have their headlights on while driving, but still we have a law. They know they shouldn't speed, we have laws that say don't speed.
SMITH: We have laws against risky driving. If Bob drives with that pizza and...
NOVAK: I really don't have the pizza, just the razor.
(CROSSTALK)
SMITH: ... get Bob and put him in. But if he's driving safely, what's wrong with driving safely?
(CROSSTALK)
PRESS: Wait a minute, let me cut through. I mean, we think she does protest too much. We are not banning cell phones! You can still have a damned conversation! You can still yak all the way to the office. It's just the handheld. The hand-free phone is there, you can make calls, you can answer calls, you can talk all you want! So, it's not as bad as you're saying.
SMITH: I understand, but the general argument is that they're trying to say, we don't mind the technology, but it has to be the Cadillac technology, voice-activated technology...
ACKERMAN: No, no, no, we're not saying that. You can have one of those little plugs in your ear, you can have it mounted. I got four different devices people have shown me, as cheap as under $15. Plug it into the cigarette lighter!
SMITH: What about the one-number? The speed dialing, the one- number dialing, will that be OK? ACKERMAN: We haven't addressed that. The individual states will take that up.
NOVAK: Let me ask you this...
PRESS: What is wrong with that?
NOVAK: We have a cell phone with a loudspeaker system, we don't have it hand-dialed, but you got to dial it. Now, some -- I am guessing in New York, some people can use other protuberances to dial it, most of us need a finger that takes a hand off the wheel. What have you gained?
ACKERMAN: That's dangerous as well, and people should use common sense.
(CROSSTALK)
ACKERMAN: But we won't be able to account for every single...
(CROSSTALK)
ACKERMAN: The technology eventually will catch up. Right now, you put your windshield wipers on in new cars, the lights go on automatically. We have a law that says you're in trouble if you don't do that. There will come a time when every cell phone is equipped completely voice-activated, and you will say "call the office," you won't have to look, you won't have to...
SMITH: I agree.
ACKERMAN: But in the meantime...
SMITH: But, congressman, that's the point. In the meantime, you are basically saying, let's raise the ladder up a little bit harder, making the average cell phone a little less available and making the Cadillac -- for the time being -- a little more, only for the elite.
(CROSSTALK)
ACKERMAN: If you are driving a Cadillac and you can afford a cell phone, go up to the $15, it's cheaper than -- it's cheaper than -- it's cheaper than a funeral.
(CROSSTALK)
NOVAK: Congressman, I have followed your long congressional career adamantly, and I know that...
ACKERMAN: You are one of my greatest fans.
NOVAK: That's right. Unlike....
PRESS: Watch out.
NOVAK: Unlike Fred and I, you are a great admirer of bureaucrats and people in the government. So I will quote to you Robert Sheldon of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, says, there's not enough testing and he said quote:
"It's premature to push for federal legislation in this area."
Let's get more data. That's not kind of an argument that appeals to me, but that argument ought to appeal to you.
ACKERMAN: It doesn't appeal to me, because the only data you need is to take a poll of the American people, who are driving and 70 percent of them -- and the numbers are going up since we put this bill put out -- New York, New Jersey, most of the Northeast, are doing polls in their states, and they are coming up with as much as 85 percent of the people -- and 85 percent of the 85 are cell phone users.
NOVAK: 85 percent of the American...
ACKERMAN: I'm surprised if I'm driving in back of somebody like you while shaving on the sidewalk.
PRESS: I want to show you, Fred, I want to show you this poll that the Congressman was talking about. New York State: I haven't seen numbers like that for anybody, not even Hillary Clinton didn't get numbers like this. OK, here it is. You want to ban cell phones among all voters in New York State. 85 percent say it, and then who go to the people who own the cell phones: you take your cell phone away, ban cell phones: 87 percent.
NOVAK: That's...
PRESS: I'm sorry, I got them backwards. 87 altogether. But 85...
NOVAK: I'll give you a quick answer to that.
SMITH: The point is, that...
PRESS: All alone! New York, Fred!
SMITH: New York State can do what it wants to. Why not let (UNINTELLIGIBLE) states exercise a bit. I think New York is crazy, let them live with it, if it works let's extend it. Let's not rush in and try...
ACKERMAN: New York is the Empire State. It's not crazy. There's...
(CROSSTALK)
SMITH: Empire! Empire is the term.
NOVAK: It's the Umpire State.
ACKERMAN: Umpire. We have a Republican governor and a Republican state senate and this sailed through the Senate and it's supported by the governor. And he is about to sign it into law.
NOVAK: We have to take a break.
PRESS: God bless America.
NOVAK: When we come back, we will ask whether the liberties of the American people are being threatened by these legislatures.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NOVAK: Welcome back to CROSSFIRE.
The New York state government, leading America once again, makes it a crime for drivers to talk on a handheld cell phone. Democratic Congressman Gary Ackerman of New York likes the ban so much he wants to extend it to the rest of America.
Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, thinks the ban ought to be tested on Broadway before we send it beyond the Hudson -- Bill Press.
PRESS: Fred, first, back to the philosophy behind all this, when I get in my car, OK? I have first of all speed limits I have to obey, there are traffic lights, there are stop lines, there are lanes I'm supposed to stay in. I have to put a seat belt on, I have to turn the lights on, have to have working taillights, certain safety bumper in the car.
I don't exactly feel henpecked or that the Constitution has been ripped up. So this cell phone thing is really just one more little thing to make cars safer to drive and to protect all the people around me, right? I mean, what is the big deal?
SMITH: One more hatchet stroke on the tree of liberty.
PRESS: Hardly. Hardly.
SMITH: The point is, we have laws already that address the -- the safety facts of distractions in the automobile. All the distractions in automobile. They have laws against reckless driving. We don't need to reach in to that panoply of all the distractions of a car, and then have his one, because it represents a novel technology, is going to be somehow demonized.
It's in any technology element that seems to be jumping into play, where the new is always more to be feared and more regulated than the traditional. If it survives long enough, we don't need regulate it.
ACKERMAN: Fred, you are missing the point. This is the only of all of those distractions that you have named, the only one that there is a technical solution to the problem. And that is, use -- we are not taking it away, we are not saying you can't drive the car, and we are not destroying democracy in this country!
SMITH: We can basically have voice-actuated radios, voice- actuated air conditions systems, all those things can be voice- actuated. Very expensive, we don't those because we recognize the convenience tradeoffs.
(CROSSTALK)
ACKERMAN: This is very inexpensive to do. It represents sometimes 5 percent of the cost of...
PRESS: Fred, one other point.
ACKERMAN: Cheap fixes are better than expensive hospital bills, and expensive funerals.
PRESS: One other point. One of the driving things behind this New York State law, was the fact that counties and counties were passing different laws, and so, you drive from one county to the next. In one county, you are allowed to hold the phone, and the next you are not.
In one county, you are allowed to dial a call. The next one you are not. It made sense. You needed some statewide...
NOVAK: Conformity!
PRESS: Conformity. Doesn't that make the argument for the congressman's national bill, so that all states are the same.
SMITH: No, Bill. The genius of America has always been that we have allowed experimentation. Some states have sales taxes that are higher, and some have taxes that are lower. Some have high speed limits and some have lower speed limits. The laboratory of democracy is a place where we test out the concepts of regulation.
We don't basically try a one size fits everybody policy. Because America -- New York may be right. We may find that out. New York just could be wrong, and we find out the other states...
ACKERMAN: Fred, you have just endorsed exactly what our bill does, and it allows each of the states to come up with their own regulations.
NOVAK: Oh, no. You have a money club on it!
ACKERMAN: That's right, but the regulations that are involved -- well, the same with speed limits. Each states does their own thing. Everything --
(CROSSTALK)
ACKERMAN: We're saying that you should have a hands-free device, we don't say which kind it should be, or whether it should be mechanically installed or whether it's portable.
SMITH: But you link government money to the process. And that basically...
(CROSSTALK)
ACKERMAN: We have 40 states that are doing this!
NOVAK: Congressman Ackerman, let me point to you where this all leads to. Patricia Pena has a daughter who was killed in an accident involving the use of a cell phone by another person. I feel very sad for her. She was one of the real crusaders for this ban. Now, listen to what she says now. "I'm a little scared that people are going to run out, and get a headset or some equipment they're not familiar with and be fumbling with that on the road." She wants to then ban headsets.
I mean, this is -- wouldn't you call this "big mother" government?
ACKERMAN: No, I...
NOVAK: That big mother is going to protect us all.
ACKERMAN: I would say that's a very sad case, and it's one of countless cases that we're -- that we're seeing these days and it's a very concerned mother. We're not trying to overlegislate on everything. We're just saying the technology exists, use it, it'll save lives.
NOVAK: Let me -- let me...
SMITH: Let me -- can I -- there's another point here. Look, we already find that police in some situations abuse the power to decide you're a bad driver, you're a dangerous driver. They come in.
Now the fact that even you have a cell phone in your car you can be accused of using it while you were driving, do we really want to give more reasons to have abusive police pulling over drivers because they (UNINTELLIGIBLE) profile?
ACKERMAN: I've heard tell that some police go as far as planting evidence. Maybe we shouldn't have any laws to prevent...
SMITH: No, but you...
ACKERMAN: ... the use of drugs. Maybe we should do away with the police. I don't know what your point is.
SMITH: Yeah, but congressman, we do have a serious problem where we have had difficulty of the police sometimes abusing their power. And that was when they were just basically dealing with real substance, not cell phones.
ACKERMAN: All laws are difficult to enforce.
NOVAK: Congressman, let me...
ACKERMAN: We don't get -- we don't get...
(CROSSTALK) We don't get -- we don't get convictions on 50 percent of the murderers. Why do we outlaw murder?
NOVAK: Let me raise a philosophical point. Congressman, I assume as a leftist you're a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. You are, aren't you?
ACKERMAN: No, I'm not.
NOVAK: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) you are.
ACKERMAN: But I appreciate and applaud everything that they do.
NOVAK: All right. All right. Now, I...
PRESS: I'm a member.
NOVAK: I just -- I just wonder if you're a little worried about our freedom is being taken away. There's very few places now where if I wanted to smoke -- I don't smoke -- but I could go to a restaurant. Even if the people in the restaurant wanted me to smoke, there's a lot of local areas that prevent that from happening. I think what we're going to have next on the cell phones is laws banning the use of cell phones in restaurants. It might...
PRESS: I hope so.
NOVAK: ... disturb somebody's eating pleasure. Aren't you a little bit worried about -- we're having a little John Adams revival -- that we're getting away from American liberties?
ACKERMAN: I -- well, sometimes somebody's -- what you call your liberty interferes with somebody else's basic freedom to relax and enjoy a dinner. I was on Amtrak going back to New York from Washington last week, there's a quiet car...
PRESS: Quiet car, right.
ACKERMAN: ... for people who don't want people -- I mean, I've been at funerals where people's cell phones have gone off. I've been at restaurants, as you...
NOVAK: You like -- you like a lot of regimentation of the people, don't you?
ACKERMAN: Oh, no, I don't -- I don't like regimentation, but neither do people in Great Britain or Italy or Israel or Japan or Korea.
NOVAK: In Japan they do like regimentation.
ACKERMAN: Well, I'll compromise on that one.
(LAUGHTER)
But all of these countries now have banned the use of drivers using cell phones that are handheld, and 40 states are going to do it.
PRESS: The debate stats in New York. It's going to continue. Our debate will continue, but not for now. We're out of time.
Fred Smith, thanks for coming in. If we have any more questions, we'll give you a call. Congressman Gary Ackerman, thank you for coming in. And when we come back, I'll give Bob Novak a call and we'll get together for our closing comments about those dreaded cell phones. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PRESS: OK. Congressman Ackerman is going to be in our chat room right after the show. You can join him by logging on to cnn.com/crossfire. Continue the debate, Bob.
It's a big, big day. I don't know whether people realize what an important day this is. Little Gloria Novak was born today, daughter of Angie and...
NOVAK: Alex.
PRESS: ... and Alex. And I want to say congratulations to the parents, congratulations to Grandmother Geraldine, and congratulations to Grandpop Bob. Six grandchildren.
NOVAK: I think you've introduced about four of them on this -- on this broadcast.
PRESS: I have. Now, are you going to give her a cell phone as a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) present?
NOVAK: I would think so.
(LAUGHTER)
I would just hope that she grows up in an America where there are still some freedoms left and that she can -- she can ride in her convertible with the top down and talking on the telephone.
PRESS: I hope she grows up in an America where it's safe to drive and you don't have idiots on those cell phones running into people. So long life to Gloria.
NOVAK: Thank you, Bill.
PRESS: From the left, I'm Bill Press. Good night for CROSSFIRE.
NOVAK: From the right, I'm Robert Novak. Join us again next time for another edition of CROSSFIRE!
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