Among common arguments against almost any form of business regulation is that government shouldn't intrude in areas where "market forces" will more efficiently accomplish the same regulation.
Among the cases that most obviously contradicts this laissez-faire belief in the self-regulating market is the shameful record of Big Tobacco. For generations, covering hundreds of thousands of smoking-related deaths and billions of dollars in smoking-caused medical expenses, tobacco companies systematically opposed any effort to publicize the dangers of cigarettes. This opposition came despite reams of research by the companies themselves -- all of it suppressed -- proving that smoking causes cancer, heart disease, emphysema, and dozens of other insults to the human body.
However, lately, the anti-regulation crowd tends to point proudly to the cellphone industry's campaign, led by AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) CEO Randall Stephenson, to get people to break their insane habit of texting while driving. Here certainly, is the model of an industry that has spotted a problem and is acting decisively against it.
In fact, the case of texting -- or any phone-based "distracted driving" -- is a good example of why government works better and faster than the market to protect consumers from unseen peril in the new products that they love to death. Over the last three years, the Wireless Association (CTIA), has demonstrated good citizenship by fulminating against texting-while-driving. Mobile operators are lending support to most laws that would impose criminal penalties on automotive texters.
However, a little historical research reveals a record that's not quite so sterling and straightforward. Before mobile operators began speaking out against driver's-seat texting, they professed a more nuanced view. While agreeing that people who text while driving are imbeciles, they drew the line, sharply, at any federal action to shut down the imbeciles. Mirroring the states'-rights ideology of the American right, the CTIA opposed a uniform federal law. Instead, it favored individual state bans.
Remarkably, even texting-while-driving has powerful political defenders. Foremost among these is Texas governor Rick Perry. He has maintained that the right to ignore the road while tapping out a love-note to your sweetie, even if it causes you to veer onto the shoulder and kill a man changing a flat tire, is a matter of personal freedom enshrined in the Constitution. Perry vetoed Texas' anti-texting law, calling it a "government effort to micromanage the behavior of adults."
The mobile industry chooses to humor extremists like Perry, which leaves 11 states where homicidal idiots can still text and drive. More importantly, it leaves a hodgepodge of laws that confuse the issue rather than making clear -- like a cigarette pack bearing the message: "SMOKING KILLS" -- that texting at the wheel also kills.
Does it? Most research indicates that distracted driving causes at least a half-million injuries and some 5,000 traffic deaths every year. Most researchers regard texting at the wheel as far more reckless than driving with a blood-alcohol level above 0.10 percent. Texting creates a crash risk 23 times worse than driving while not distracted.
Before CTIA members like AT&T and Sprint took their currently responsible position favoring (state) anti-texting laws, they preferred to hawk "driver education" as a nice, non-controversial, under-the-radar solution. Don't let the government come between you and your mobile-phone operator. Leave it to us, the corporations, to tell drivers, hey, don't text at the wheel. And everybody'll stop being naughty, just like that.
Except, the idiots haven't stopped. At least 40 percent of all drivers continue to use their phones while driving, especially in those 11 states where distracted driving remains as sacrosanct as the Alamo and the Second Amendment. This typical failure at self-regulation was foreseen, in the 1960s, by Martin Cooper, who developed one of the first "car phones." As soon as he had invented the damn thing, Cooper had the wisdom to realize what a menace he had wrought. "There should be a lock on the dial," he said, "so that you couldn't dial while driving."
Cooper's industry has made praiseworthy progress on distracted driving. But it's still reluctant to put a lock on the dial. And it's still quibbling over how big, and how strong, and how widespread, the lock should be. So, even though the solution is as simple as a seatbelt, distracted driving remains a daunting, deadly problem. The reason for this stalemate -- and the reason why capitalism and self-regulation are chronically incompatible -- is that the public interest has never been, nor will it ever be, a "market force."
Mr. Roques, i did not quite understand the app that you're using. So, what does app do depending on your response?
I think people have a funny sense to protect themselves. People will protect themselves from rain even though getting wet may have not so severe consequences but they do little or nothing to protect themselves from accidents.
Mr. R: Who even would have thought that something so innocuous and useful as a cell phone would end up being a cause of death? You are right in that manufacturers' ability to warn people and control their actions is limited.
Barbara, i agree with your statement that we cannot legislate common sense. Companies need to protect themselves by warning people not to do certain things (even though some are common sense). But with the advance technology that we use, sometimes common sense may not be that common. for example, i did not know that its dangerous to boil water or milk for coffee in microwave as the air remains trapped in the liquid and when coffee powder is poured in the liquid then the liquid starts to boil uncontrollably. I do not know if someone does not know such things can sue the company?
Its funny how we norrmally have to go out of our way to get people to take care of themselves (motorcycle drivers wearing helmets, drivers using seatbelts, etc).
I have a few apps that notice that I'm moving and ask if I'm driving or only a passenger and based on my response, block the app or not. What else can they do?
I think one of the reasons we see so many governments getting involved in these regulations is litigation. In some of the examples cited by our readers, regulations were a direct result of a lawsuit. I might be wrong, but weren't smoking bans an offshoot of "smoking is dangerous..."? and smoker lawsuits? I just read somewhere that a guy was awarded damages becuase he ate 10 bags of microwave popcorn everyday and developed health problems. SERIOUSLY? (That could be an oversimplification: I recently watched a documentary on the McDonald's hot coffee suit and it is very different from the way it has been reported.) At any rate, you can't legislate common sense. Sadly, you have to protect yourself from people that don't have it!
One of my all-time favorite warnings: "Do not put the battery in to the microwave."
I think Barbara made the most salient point. Regulation isn't about your personal freedom, or even the responsibility of the corporation. It's about other people, bystanders, the public. When people use or misuse a product in a way that endangers or even annoys other people, neither the maker nor the user of the product is can be trusted to intervene on behalf of everybody else. A mediator is required to defend the publc interest. Appropriately, that mediator usually turns out to be a public institution, the government.
I do not have a religious faith in corporate benevolence. I have a deeply ingrained suspicion of both the effectiveness and desirability of governmental regulation. Far too much of it is aimed at helping people who don't want -- and don't need -- to be helped. Bloomberg's anti-Big Gulp, anti-saturated fat, make-restaurants-put-calories-on-the-menu diktats are an excellent example. They don't help fat people, but they inconvenience everyone.
Why should it be the responsibility of a manufacturer to say, "Don't use our product in an idiotic fashion"? And why doesn't it stretch to all manufacturers? Should tobacco companies say, "Don't use our product at all"? Cellphone manufacturers are good guys when they say, "Don't text while driving." Shouldn't publishers say, "Don't read while driving?" Where are the ads from knife makers saying, "Don't cut yourself on our product'? Should tool makers be required to advertise, "Don't hit yourself with our hammers, don't cut your finger off with our saws?"
Why, in our Great Republic, is Joe Average considered to be bright enough to choose his leaders but too stupid to understand that fire burns, water drowns and knives are sharp? Sure, there are those who don't understand these things and get hurt, but whence cometh the notion that it's the government's mission to protect every man from himself and severely annoy the rest of us in the process.
Let me point out that seat belt laws never saved a life. Using seat belts saves lives. Plenty of people are still sitting on their seat belts, and the great majority of them will never be fined, because the cost to local governments in time, effort and lost elections is too great. It's just one more of those laws that can be invoked if you piss off a cop. I mean, how can you prove in court that you did have your belt on?
The worst of these well-meaning, stupid regulations produce vanishingly small benefits and monstrous annoyance. They are hailed by those who love laws for their own sake, not for the social good they may do. The rest of us modify Lincoln's, "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master," to "I don't want to be a nanny and I don't want to be nannied."
Like the casual baseball fan who doesn’t understand the infield-fly rule, normal voters – with bigger fish to fry – don’t enjoy the arcana of politics.
EBN Dialogue enables and encourages you to participate in live chats with notable leaders and luminaries. Not only editors and journalists, but the entire EBN community is able to comment and ask questions. Listed below are upcoming and archived chats.
Archived Dialogues
Thailand Stages a Comeback Join EBN contributor Jennifer Baljko on Thursday August 23, 2012, at 11:00 a.m. EST for a live chat on how electronic manufacturers in Thailand have shored up their supply chain to reduce the impact of future natural disasters.
Euro-Crisis: What It Means for High-Tech Firms Join EBN Editor in Chief Bolaji Ojo and Contributing Editor Jennifer Baljko on Thursday, July 12, at 10:00 a.m. EDT for a Live Chat on high-tech and Europe's economic difficulties.
Microsoft Surface: Potential Winners & Losers What are the implications for the electronics industry supply chain of Microsoft Corp.'s decision to launch its own tablet PC? Join industry veteran and EE Times' systems and OEM expert Rick Merritt on Tuesday, July 3, at 12:00 pm EDT for a Live Chat on this subject.
Join EBN contributor Jennifer Baljko on Thursday August 23, 2012, at 11:00 a.m. EST for a live chat on how electronic manufacturers in Thailand have shored up their supply chain to reduce the impact of future natural disasters.
Peter Drucker famously said "Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window." Yet in the razor's-edge world of electronics—with a lean supply chain and just-in-time demands—the need to know the future is vital.
You've heard the saying "the No. 1 supply chain risk is your people." That hasn't always been the case. But today's complex global supply chain requires a new type of multitalented employee. It's one who understands, finance, marketing, economics, is savvy with technology, graceful with relationships and can think analytically.
Where are these people? Are universities properly preparing the next generation supply chain professionals? How do train your existing workforce for these new, demanding positions?
Brian Fuller, editor-in-chief of EBN, will lead a 60-minute Avnet Velocity panel discussion that will ask and answer these and other questions swirling around today's supply-chain talent challenges.
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