The State Senate’s Transportation Committee held a public hearing this week about “cell phone use while driving,” during which the committee members tried as hard as possible to avoid the subject.

Well, the first two speakers, Sharon Racusin of Norwich and Carol Rose, the executive director of the Vermont Safety Education Center, actually addressed the (supposed) topic of the day. Not only that, they (and, as it turned only they) buttressed their arguments in favor of banning cell-hone use by drivers with actual data.

The senators, by and large, were not interested in data. They seemed more receptive to the final speaker, a businessman who, out of kindness,  will not be identified here, who started off by saying, “I don’t believe the statistics.”

It would be unfair to conclude that the senators didn’t believe the statistics, only that they weren’t about to be dominated by them.

The statistics leave little doubt that a driver using a cell phone is far more likely to cause an accident, possibly injuring or killing himself and others, than a driver not using a cell phone. Allowing those statistics to dominate, then, might persuade a senator to support at least a partial ban on cell phone use, as is the law in 29 other states.

But the senators don’t want to pass such a law. Otherwise they would not have spent so much of their time asking questions about the dangers of text-messaging while behind the wheel. That’s what they want to ban by law.

In fact, the Senate has already done its part, passing S 280 last week by a 25-0 margin. Now, say the senators, it’s up to the House.

Not so fast, says the House, where most members want to go farther, also banning hand-held cell phone use and changing the seat belt law to “primary enforcement,” so that police officers could enforce it even if they had not stopped a driver for another offense.

“Highway safety really needs a comprehensive approach,” said Rep. Maxine Grad, a Fairfax Democrat who is the sponsor of the more far-reaching House bill. “We’re talking about public health and safety.”

So while the hearing itself produced almost no useful information, its very lack of substance illustrated what it was trying to hide:

–A House-Senate game of chicken;

–The bi-partisan, bi-ideological inclination of Vermonters (and not just elected officials) to prefer personal observation, anecdotes, and even gossip, where it is convenient,  to empirically testable data, as if, “I don’t believe the statistics” were the state’s motto;

–The apparently widespread if unspoken Vermont assumption that the right to be left alone in your car is comparable to the right to be left alone at home.

“It goes back to the fight (in the 1980s) over the child restraint law,” said Carol Rose of the Safety Education Center. “A kneejerk reaction of ‘don’t tell me what to do in my car.’ Or ‘I don’t want big brother telling me what to do with my kids.’”

Among those who seems to share that outlook is Gov. Jim Douglas, who in the past, according to Tom Williams of the American Automobile Association, has mentioned “personal freedom” concerns in relation to regulating what drivers may do in their cars. Just last week, Douglas worried that banning cell phones could put the state on a “slippery slope,” presumably toward outlawing coffee drinking, eating, and other common driver activities.

From a strictly legal perspective, the personal freedom concern does not exist. There is no right to drive a car on public roads. Were there a right to drive, no one would need a license. The state does not issue permits granting freedom of speech or protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Those are rights.

Permission to drive is a privilege granted by the state, which created the highway system, maintains it, repairs it, and patrols it. So the state has the authority – and arguably the responsibility — to impose any reasonable rules and regulations for using that system.

But legal/constitutional reality does not always trump culture, and apparently some Vermonters connect their automobile with their personal freedom.

Not a completely irrational connection. Especially in rural areas – which is where the car/freedom link seems strongest (seat-belt use is far lower, for instance) – a car expands one’s mobility and options, which are not unrelated to freedom. Besides, people impose their personalities onto their cars (or select the car that fits their personality). So the ‘don’t tell me what to do in my car’ attitude is understandable,  if unsupportable in law or logic.

At any rate, it seems to be carrying the day in the Senate. So does not paying attention to data, asking for little of it, and instead bringing up personal impressions.

“I find that the most (diverting activities) when I’m driving are changing the CD and dealing with hot coffee or tea,” said Senate President (and Democratic gubernatorial hopeful) Peter Shumlin of Putney.

When the senators did resort to actual evidence, they did so selectively. Sen. Phil Scott, the Montpelier Republican (seeking his party’s nomination for lieutenant governor) pointed to a study by Virginia Tech indicating that eating, changing CDs, or putting on make-up are more distracting than using a hand-held cell phone.

It was, implicitly, Douglas’s slippery slope argument, and Scott was reciting the statistics accurately. What he ignored was evidence that it is the use of electronic devices, including cell phones, which have “increased exponentially in recent years” in the words of Despina Stavrinos, a researcher at the UAB University Transportation Center, describing research prepared for the U.S. Transportation Department.

Using a cell phone, according to government data, impairs a driver as much as being drunk under Vermont law.

To be sure, the folks on the other side of this debate aren’t always guided by data, either. Rep. Grad’s bill (H 493) would ban only hand-held phones. But the government data indicate that the hands-free cell phones are no safer than the hand-held. That’s why, according to Tom Williams the Northern New England Regional Manager for the American Automobile Association, his organization does not favor the cell phone ban.

But as Grad said, a ban on hands-free calling would be harder to enforce. A cop who sees a driver with a phone to her ear has evidence. If he just sees her moving her lips, she can always claim (having of course turned off the phone as soon as she saw the bubble-gum machine behind her) that she was singing along with the radio or her I-pod.

Even if there is no right to drive there might be legitimate civil liberties concerns about changing from secondary to primary seat belt enforcement. That gives the individual cop a lot of leeway to, for instance, stop a car to check for seat-belt use just because he didn’t like the political point of view expressed by the car’s bumper stickers.

Ironically, one possible alternative came from the businessman who didn’t believe in statistics. Instead of banning cell phone use, he suggested, why not increase the penalties for drivers who cause accidents because they were on the phone? That might serve as an effective deterrent.

As it happens, though, no such bill has been introduced.

Oh, and speaking of data, here’s some about Vermont from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. If the state went to primary coverage of its seat belt law, compliance would rise – and the number of accidents would decline — enough to save insurance companies $1,316, 000, and the state treasury $498,152.

That may not be a conclusive argument on behalf of primary enforcement. But it is powerful evidence that when drivers assert their individuality by not wearing seat belts, or by talking on the phone, they cost the rest of us money. Driving is a collective, not an individual, activity.

Due to unavoidable obligations both personal and professional (some hot stories coming) the News Guy was unable to post today.

Check back Friday

The Greek slave Pedagogue

Grammar Note: On Vermont Public Radio Friday, Sen. Phil Scott, a Republican from Montpelier and an aspirant to the lieutenant governorship, described something as “a phenomena.”

Scott was thereby guilty of what might be called the criterion phenomenon, the inexplicable compulsion to call a single phenomenon or criterion two of them.

But let us not confine our pedagogic purity to the politicians. To the contrary, we will also meticulously monitor members of the media (as we assiduously arrange the alliteration). A few hours earlier, VPR’s Mitch Wertlieb, helping the quarterly and loathsome fundraising drive had imagined “$5,000 laying on the ground.”

Possible, had the $5,000 undergone metamorphosis into human form and commenced placing objects upon the earth. Or alternatively, transformed itself into two human beings, and….oh, no. This is a family web site.

More likely the five grand was (at least in the Wertliebian imagination) lying on the ground.

If it’s any comfort to either man, on the radio the next day, Steven Chu, the secretary of Energy and, more pertinently in this case, a Nobel prize winner, talked of a competition “between (his younger brother) and I.”

This is the “between I” problem, the origin of which could be similar to that of the criterion phenomenon For decades, teachers scolded kids who said “Johnny and me are going to town,” or some variant thereof, convincing millions that it is always correct to say “(whoever) and I” even when “me” is right and “I” is wrong.

(Anyone who at this point actually said to him/her self, “no, ‘I am wrong,’” should be thoroughly ashamed, if not summarily executed.)

Political Note: Back in October, the News Guy, putting on his political prognosticator hat, suggested that State Sen. Doug Racine of Richmond had emerged, however tentatively, as the front-runner among the five Democrats running for their party’s nomination for governor.

Very tentatively indeed, as it turns out. Looking at the field today, it looks as though Senate President Peter Shumlin of Putney has become the first among equals.

Considering that the primary is at least 28 weeks away (the date may yet be changed), that no one seems to have taken an actual poll, and that most people who will vote in the primary are so far paying scant attention to the campaign, Shumlin’s hold on this position is just as tentative as Racine’s was.

Besides, in a way it was no fair. Shumlin had outside help. From the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

It’s not likely that Vermont Yankee or its owner, the Entergy company of Louisiana, planned things that that way. Shumlin has been one of the plant’s persistent critics, meaning the best thing it could do for him was to do just about everything wrong, calling attention to the plant’s possible safety problems and its management’s competence and dependability, or lack thereof.

Precisely what it has done in the last several weeks, almost as if the Shumlin campaign had been secretly orchestrating Entergy’s actions, or (for those who believe in such) put a hex on the company.

But Shumlin didn’t just sit there as this gift was proffered to him. He knew what to do with it. No smug I-told-you-so wise cracks. No (apparent) gloating. He’s been calm, forceful, consistent in the way he’s handled himself behind the various podiums from which he’s addressed the issue.

Of course all the candidates have been standing behind podiums. But thanks to the Vermont Yankee tritium leaks and misstatements, there have been lots of television cameras and reporters in front of those podiums while Shumlin spoke. It’s been hard for the other Democrats to get much ink or air time of late.

Speaking of which, has anybody noticed that Lt.Gov. Brian Dubie, who faces no primary for the Republican nomination, has gotten a bit of air time because Gov. Jim Douglas keeps inviting him to every podium to face the cameras even though there is no point at all to Dubie’s presence?

Well, not counting to have him face the cameras.

Since Dubie has said nothing newsworthy, he hasn’t gotten much attention. Still, he’s been pictured up there next to the other officials who actually have power to make policy decisions.

Not Dubie’s fault. The lieutenant governor just doesn’t have much in the way of power to make policy decisions.

Tax Note: Well, on the very morning of the News Guy’s last post (scroll down), the one pointing out that there was no actual evidence that Vermont’s relatively progressive income tax structure has produced a measurable exodus of wealthy folks, the Burlington Free Press’s lead story in the local section bore the headline “Tax Migration Feared.”

What? Had somebody come up with actual evidence that your humble agent had somehow missed?

In a word, no. A tax accountant said some of his clients had asked him about the tax benefits of moving elsewhere. This is actual evidence of nothing. The closest thing to evidence that the Senate Economic Development Committee heard at a Burlington session was the claim of real estate developer Ernie Pomerleau that he has no plans to move out, but knows three dozen people who have.

A nice, round figure, three dozen. Nobody seems to have asked Pomerleau for their names. But let’s stipulate that Pomerleau is an honorable fellow and has actually talked to 36 wealthy Vermonters thinking about blowing the pop stand because of last year’s repeal of the state tax preference on capital gains.

But just where will they go? Only eighteen other states (according to the Legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office) offer tax breaks on capital gains, and most of them apply only to some gains. The only states that had the kind of broad preference Vermont just repealed are Arkansas, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

Somehow, a mass exodus of wealthy Vermonters to North Dakota does not seem likely.

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