Columnist doubles his fun with two topics
Like an all-you-can-eat buffet or a sample cart at CostCo, this week’s column has a little bit of a couple topics. Just don’t fill up; dinner will be ready soon, and you don’t want to spoil your appetite.
Toothless texting ban
In the six months since Pennsylvania’s ban on texting while driving went into effect, there’s been one clear result of the new law: How easy it is to flout the new regulation.
The law instituting a $50 fine for texting and driving went into effect March 8 and in the months in between, it’s become evident that even though police can — and will — pull you over if they catch you texting, there’s an easy out. All the driver has to do is say they weren’t texting — and poof! — no more $50 fine.
Amazingly, the enforcement of the law hinges on the truthfulness of the driver. If he says he was using his phone to dial a number (which is legal) and not texting, there is nothing police can do.
Imagine this being applied to other dangerous driving behavior: “Sorry, officer, I know I swerved into that telephone pole, but I’m not drunk. I swear.” I imagine that would result in a lot fewer DUI convictions each year.
According to Pittsburgh’s WESA, police aren’t exactly thrilled with the toothless nature of the texting ban, which relies on the truthfulness of the driver. Police are legally prohibited from checking the driver’s phone to verify if they were telling the truth.
“There is no true decisive way [to tell], unless a driver admits to you that they were texting,” Reed told the radio station.
The texting ban didn’t start out this way. The original bill stipulated that all hand-held cell phone use would be banned, but that was stripped out by the state House lawmakers.
So Pennsylvania has the dubious distinction of having seemed to do something to make our roads safer — but in actuality not made it enforceable. Seems pretty par for the course for our bloated state legislature.
Wednesday night football
The new season is officially under way following the Cowboy’s victory over the Giants — and my wife couldn’t be more upset about it.
As regular readers know, my wife is not a big fan of football, in part because when we got married I didn’t do much more than watch the Steelers play. But now, thanks to fantasy football, I’m glued to the television (and iPad and laptop) whenever a game is on.
So she’s especially distraught that this year, for the first time, there will be games nearly every single Thursday night of the season (every week but the first and last). She already is fed up with there always being “one more” game on Sunday and then, of course, Monday Night Football after she thought everything was over on Sunday.
Add in Thursday to the mix? I can hear her already, “Football is on? Again?!”
So when I grabbed the remote on Wednesday night to flip over to NBC in time for kickoff, her face was priceless.
“Wednesday night, too?” she groaned.
Just this one time, I assured her, since the game was only on Wednesday because the NFL didn’t want to conflict with the President’s address on Thursday. (Which, I’ll admit, is surprising it wasn’t the opposite scenario since I figured the NFL was so big it could even tell the leader of the free world what to do.) So, after some cajoling to overcome her initial doubt, I put her mind at ease that the NFL isn’t scheduling games regularly on Wednesday night.
For now.
If you’d like to see if he’s lying, Brandon Szuminsky can be reached at bszuminsky@heraldstandard.com.