 Welcome back to the FeeCast, your weekly dose of economic thinking from your friends at the Foundation for Economic Education. My name, as always, is Richard Lawrence, and I'm here today with our resplendent panel of Anna Jane Perrell, Dan Sanchez, and Sean Malone, who is typically behind the camera, but in this week for Marianne March, who's at a marketing conference and unable to join us. So we're happy to have you today, Sean. That's right. I'm thrilled to be here. How are you guys doing? I'm also a recent fill-in host for Richard as well. We've demoted you. You couldn't handle that, but we'll let you sit over there. That was a shot. Yeah, that's my one chance in its place. So who likes to drive cars? Let me just open up with that. I didn't used to, but I do now, actually. You enjoy driving. I enjoy driving. I hate it. If I never have to get behind the wheel of a car ever again. Seriously. Because to me it's raw with danger. Threat of police, threat of tickets. I'm going to either kill someone, kill myself. Yeah, no. I enjoyed it until I moved to Atlanta. That's funny. Yeah, it's a nightmare here. So you guys are going, you enjoy it, but you on the other hand, and maybe Dan, are going to be in the front of the line when self-driving cars come onto the market, right? Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. No? No. Don't trust them? Yeah, I don't like being that much out of control. Let's see, I don't trust myself. That's the problem. Well, I do trust myself, and I'm typically a very good driver. Just a little anecdote is, I got my very first speeding ticket about two weeks ago, and I was driving down near the Georgia-Alabama border in West Point, Georgia to see my godmother. I'm driving with her friend in the car, our friend in the car, and all of a sudden, of course, I see the flashing lights, and I've gone a little bit too fast, and it was an expensive ticket, something I don't want to repeat. So on my drive down to Florida for the beach, I just use cruise control the entire time. Yeah, you said this recently that you'd never had a ticket which just blows my mind. Yeah, never a speeding ticket. Sorry, that's, oh, I see, I was interpreting, but either way, I've had, I'm, what, 26, 27? I've had like three speeding tickets at this point. Never a speeding ticket. I was pulled over once for having an expired tag on my mom's car, so that mom was an issue. The week before, my court date was my week before I started college, so that was a very interesting time. Well, you said you've never had an accident, right? Never had an accident. And that is the goal of this new law, in fact, in Georgia, to ban texting or any kind of input into the phone while driving. Hands-free Georgia law. And it just came online. It's now in force ever since July 1st of this year, and I think our panel might have some mixed feelings about this. Well, I got yelled at about it, which was, which was bizarre. But not by a cop. But not by a cop. I was, I was, I was stopped at a red light with many, many other cars during rush hour, and a guy, and I just pulled my phone up just to, just to glance at it. Actually had a buddy in the car at the time too, so we were mostly conversing. And a guy made a bunch of motions, like, you're, what are you doing? And he's in the car next to me, and I thought, what's this insane person doing? And so he motioned to roll down the window. So I did, and he- So a hand signaling virtue signal. Hand signaling virtue signaler who, who told me to roll down the window and then said, have you been living under a rock? I, it's hands-free. And it's a hands-free state now. What are you doing? And I was like, well, we're stopped. So I didn't really think it would be that big of a deal. But okay, sir, thank you for your time. And then we continued on our way. But it's one of the most bizarre scoldings from a random human being. Very close to a citizen's arrest. It was, it could have been- Right on the verge. I mean, he was irate enough. I mean- I mean, you say he's not a police officer, but he's sort of like deputizing himself. It's just like, why does he care? Like, there's so many other things. Honestly, this has really just created a situation where, and I'm a little bit of a side, I'm going to go on a little bit of a side right now. But do you guys remember T9 texting? You guys probably were. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And that was very physical, right? You could use your flip phone and you could physically feel the buttons. Remember that? Yeah. And even- You pressed like number seven, like six times. Yeah. And it was like, predictive texting. Yeah. Going from that, like the early, which is, you know, technology that precursors like, you know, touch phones, touch screens. Going from that texting to touch screens, you lost an ability. I used to be able to text without looking at my phone at all. Yeah. Remember that? Like, and I could do that in the car and very easily just look at- Just windshield. Then the touch screen came and I had no idea what I was typing. You had to look at it because you can't feel the buttons. And now, like this hands-free thing, I'm almost getting more and more, I'm getting like less and less safe with my texting. And so it's like, it's creating this situation where I now have to like bring it down here. And so it's like, not only am I up here and I can't look at it and I can't feel the buttons, I'm like down here trying to- What I've gotten weirdly good at, this actually started, you know, about a year ago, whatever, I was starting to experience a lot of kind of carpal tunnel kind of things. So I started getting really, I tried anyway to get really good with speech to text stuff. And so I started doing that with my phone too. But the problem is it doesn't actually work that well. So there's a lot of things where you have to look at it and the word wasn't exactly right. And you throw around a lot of slang. So a lot of youth culture words that the phone doesn't know about. Yeah. Well, and also I find it- Wakanda. Yeah. Have you taught it that yet? I haven't. But it also randomly capitalizes words that I, that shouldn't be like regular stuff like there or your or whatever. It'll just for some reason be capital. Maybe it thinks you're done with the sentence and we're going on to a new sentence. It doesn't enter a period. I don't know. So there's stuff like that where I'll try to do that to avoid having to do the the drawing with my hand and look at it. But then that doesn't work. So you have to look at it and do that kind of stuff. Well, now we're not supposed to be doing any of this right as of July the 1st. Georgia joined 14 other states to become number 15 plus DC in having this hands free, no texting while driving law. And basically what it means is a driver can't have any phone in their hand. They can't support a phone on their body. You have to have one of these, you know, mounts that's either magnetic or maybe physical. You might may not send or read any text based communications. You may not send any messages. You might may not watch any video unless it's for navigation. Here's the interesting part. We were reviewing this in our pre-production meeting. The hands free law does not apply to the following electronic devices. I'm going to summarize. It doesn't apply to radio, citizens band radio, two way communications device from a commercial source. What in the way world is that sounds like a phone to me? You know, sounds like a phone is a subscription based emergency communications device. I mean, that's the very definition of what a cell phone is. In vehicle security, ham radio, navigation or remote diagnostic system. And so you've got all these exceptions baked into this law. It almost makes you wonder, and of course we can have a larger conversation about who was in favor of this law. I mean, it seems pretty clear if you listen to that list that a lot of that probably came from lobbying and probably that lobbying came from police unions and truckers and like, you know, anybody who uses that kind of stuff but would want to avoid the ban, which we were talking about before too. Like if you see the amount of distractions, let's say in a police cruiser, like it's like a desk. It's a, yeah, it just dwarfs whatever the distractions that I've ever had in a vehicle. You know, when I got pulled over for my very first speeding ticket, they printed it out on a laser printer. It's like, where's that laser printer in the car? In the back of your car. Yeah. Yeah. And so we have an article on this. It's actually been very popular on the websites by Mark Scribner from CEI. Dan, tell us about that article because it's got some interesting data. Yes. It's called Why a Nationwide Ban on Texting While Driving is a Bad Idea. And it talks about how in 2017, there were 37,461 highway fatalities. Of those, 9% were distraction-affected crash fatalities. And of the total, 1.3%. So just a portion of that 9% were involved in cell phone use of all kinds. So about 486 fatalities total. Nationally. This is nationally, 486. For one thing, it's much smaller than you'd think given like the uproar and the prioritization of this issue. And to put that in context, 28% of highway fatalities that year in 2016 were from alcohol-related reasons. So compare 1.5% from distracted driving with an electronic device such as a cell phone to alcohol-related. So clearly, this is not something... I mean, we had talked about this with plastic bands a few weeks ago, but this is not something that represents a major problem statistically. This is not a big thing that is killing lots and lots of people, but it is something that I guess governments feel like they have some control over that they can do something. I like how you mentioned it's not a big problem statistically because it is actually a big problem for the people who are affected. So let's just acknowledge that. For the 400, and you said 67 people or so who were killed. 86. 486 people in 2016. It's a huge problem. So let's not diminish that. The question really becomes, is this something that warrants the attention that a ban, again, like we've been talking about recently, actually would call for? And would the ban actually help? Because it's also interesting to see who supports the ban, but it's interesting to see who opposes it. And one interest that imposes it is the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Interesting. And you would think that they have a lot of skin in the game. If anyone would be interested in reducing their own liability to pay out for claims for accidents, it would be the insurance industry. But they point out that when you have a ban, what you do is you motivate people to hide from their texting from police. Absolutely. So whereas if there wasn't a ban, at least they have it up in the eye line of traffic. But if you have the ban, then they're looking down because they're trying to hide the phone. And that's much more likely to cause an accident. And I've realized that I've done this. Oh, absolutely. Right. And I've realized that not that I spend a lot of time texting in the car, but where I am trying to change a podcast or press play or stop on something or to pick up a phone call or whatever else to shuffle on my music. It's like things like that. I actually I actually worry and I pull over to a rest stop. I was driving to Savannah for the Labor Day Weekend and I was had to pull over to the rest area every time I was like, okay, now I'm in the mood for podcasts. So I'm going to like, you know, deal with that. Completely stop. But of course, you know, all this enforcement around the law is still being discovered as we experience it in our daily lives. According to some people, and I don't know exactly if this is legitimate or not, you are allowed one press per use of your phone. As long as it's still on the dashboard or, you know. So it can't be on like on your thigh. It can't be like sitting right here. I mean, that's what I would do hypothetically maybe. The reason for the single press is you're supposed to be answering a call, hanging up a call, you know, pressing go on your navigation device or pressing stop, right? And so you can imagine a situation where someone gets pulled over because, you know, the cop says, I saw you pushing on your phone more than once. You know, you could say, well, you know, I did actually break between presses, right? I did only press it once at a time. I mean, it's it's odd too, because like I was reading that list of exemptions before, you know, you can argue that a cell phone is a personal subscription-based emergency communications device. It's funny too. I think that one's a really interesting one just because when I was a kid, when I was 15, 16 years old, that's all cell phones were, right? That's literally it was there's a huge discussion between my brother and myself and my parents around even being allowed to have a cell phone at 16, 17 years old. And the working case at that point was, well, look, if we have a phone and we shared a phone at first, Nokia 8600 brick or whatever that we had a break to you to remember the model. I sure do. Well, who doesn't remember the no key? I mean, that's get some snake going on that. That was the only game on that brick. But but we shared that early, you know, I was I think 16, maybe 17 years after we we were sharing a car as well at that point. And so we had that explicitly because if you get stranded, if you're stuck somewhere, if you need help, it's the excuse or slash reason that every kid in my high school wanted a cell phone, right? But it's I need it for safety. Weirdly, it's a legitimate reason, though. You know, I mean, when when we were little, I don't know if you guys had this when I was little, the rule for my mom was, you know, every couple hours or whatever who what where why when, tell us where you are, tell us what you're doing, tell us who you're with. Cell phones made that possible in a way that you know, you otherwise had to be at, you know, somebody's house or be able to use a pay phone or something else like that, that, you know, wasn't realistic all the time, especially once you, you know, are in the high school and, you know, you're 17, you're, you're out and about with your friends. So it's realistic to argue that cell phones have made our lives much safer, right? In addition to more convenient, in addition to richer, in addition to more productive. But but let's talk and by the way, not just not just that, but also maps and stuff that you would never have had access to. I think that makes you immensely safer as well, knowing where you're where you are, where you're going, not going through a bad neighborhood, ways divert you around traffic, all the rest. But you know, of course, let's go back to this law and the fact that it seeks to, at least on its surface, address a problem, a problem that has affected many people individually, right? It may not be the most pressing problem, but at least it's looking to accomplish a goal that we can all be behind, which is fewer roadway fatalities, right? We don't want to see any roadway fatalities. And we don't want to see any caused by distracted driving. And that includes, by the way, in that 9% number, Dan, that you quoted, rummaging around on the floor for the fry that you dropped recently, or trying to find, you know, whatever in the back seat to keep your kid placated. Or just being lost in thought. Precisely. That's actually one of the reasons is daydreaming, right? Now, what was the, because there was a number for the last one, which I thought was really high. Yeah. When we were looking into this, it was there is some, I think there may not be a number associated with the fact that we were looking at, but it was along the lines of distracted or lost in thought was the cause of more accidents than cell phone related. Yeah. Distraction. But yeah, we need more specifics. So let's talk a little bit about how the sausage gets made, right? I mean, it's, it's obviously seeking to accomplish a goal that we all find important. But why do you guys suppose this law exists here in Georgia now, in addition to the other states and District of Columbia? I mean, well, I would mention here that I, I was actually pulled over for this, this offense many, many years ago in California. This, this kind of law has existed, you know, in other places for quite some time. When I was living in Los Angeles, this would have been 2007 or eight. It wasn't a hands free thing, but you weren't allowed to talk on the phone at the time. And I, I happened to make a tremendous error of actively making eye contact with a, with a motorcycle cop across the street while I was on the phone. Self incriminating. Self incriminating. But so this has been a law that's been in some of these major metropolitan areas. But why? That's my question. LA is like trendy. So it's like, you know, Pinkberry was there first. So it's also there. That's the thing. I think you see this with a lot of laws that start in New York or LA, where it gets rolled out to the, kind of to the rest of the country. And I think some of it is a little bit of signaling or is a little bit of like, look, we're as cosmopolitan, as Los Angeles, we have the same kinds of institutions and rules and everything else. What do you mean? Yeah. What do you mean by like cosmopolitan and how does hands free? Cause I'm actually like annoyed by the hands free thing. And I, every time I complain about Georgia, uh, that's what I start with. So it's like, I don't understand how this is appealing to citizens of the state at all. I don't know necessarily how it would either, but I do see that you see, so you'll see this with a lot of things like, uh, fast food bands or, you know, restrictions on neighborhoods that, that, uh, for, um, which you call food deserts or whatever they start imposing zoning restrictions and say, you have to have a whole foods within this, this area. And it starts in, you know, the hip trendy cities. It starts in Los Angeles. It starts in New York and it kind of gets rolled out into other places. And it's not clear a lot of the times that this has anything to do with efficacy, right? Cause we've also seen this with, with, uh, traffic cameras where there's no, uh, there's no evidence of any kind that traffic cameras reduce fatalities. In fact, the opposite, in fact, is the case. I went to Chicago for many, many years and data coming out of Chicago where there are traffic cams everywhere show that they actually increase accidents. What was the question? Oh, sorry. Just cause like people are slamming on their brakes and stuff. Or I mean, slamming on their brakes, trying to, you know, speed through the intersection before, you know, the light turns red and the camera catches them. I mean, that's strictly a revenue generating device, right? I mean, that's what, I mean, that's why people complain about that. Well, I mean, that's one of the reasons that this law may be in place here in Georgia as well, right? Because for the first incident, it's a hundred or it's a $50 fine, but for every other incident, the fine keeps increasing, right? So if you're caught two, three, four times, you could have a fine up to $150. That was originally $900 capped in, in the original legislation, but they worked it down to 150. So they're definitely kind of gunning for a revenue generating purpose here as well. I mean, we live in a state where you get points on your license, does it affect your license in that way? I don't know the answer to that. It may. Yeah, I have no idea off the top of my head. I don't know whether that works in Georgia either. And so I think what you said, Sean, or maybe Dan, about signaling, right, that this is something that Georgia wants to show the rest of the country, that they are, you know, with it, they are on the cutting edge of legislation, that they are sensitive to every tool in the arsenal that can be used, or every tool in the toolbox that can be used in order to make driving safer. And this, of course, in an era when Georgia is becoming a bigger hub for filmmaking, all the Marvel movies are being made here, various other films are being made here, not to mention the fact that they're being induced by incentives and tax, in taxes and otherwise, but that's another subject entirely. But it could make Georgia appear to be a more attractive pro business location than other places in the Southeast, which is what Georgia is regarded as today. Or at least make it feel a little bit more like some of the larger cities, you know, that people are coming from, especially if you think about the film industry presence and stuff, like people coming from LA. Look, I hear this a lot from people. I mean, you hear this about America referencing the rest of the world, like, oh, how backwards are you with that, with your gun laws? Or how backwards are you? I can't believe we allow this when the rest of the world doesn't allow that. And I think the same thing applies state to state or city to city sometimes, like LA has banned this. Look at California is already ahead of the curve on this thing. See, I'm not sold some, I'm just not sold on the idea that this somehow makes Georgia look like a better place to live or do business. I don't see that. But that's because that would not appeal to me. I'd be like, oh, you're, you know, oh, cool, a ban on something. One more thing I can't do. So for me, I'm not, it's not compelling to me that argument. I think it's genuinely especially compared to, I guess it's an out of proportion response to something that's upsetting, which is fatality, which is death, which is safety. It's an out of portion out of proportion response. I think that the government can actually control. And that's why that that's why it was so easy, not easy to enact, but that's why it's been enacted because like the straws, absolutely, it's just a choice that they can, it's a choice people can make. And of course, it's being forced on them now. So now we've established that this law exists. There are certain exemptions to it, obviously, that are that are worth discussing that perhaps it doesn't signal to everybody that this is a state that's progressive in the non political sense, but very forward looking. I want to go a little bit deeper and I want to kind of go into the more philosophical side of things because, you know, one of the reasons that this sort of law is established is as a deterrent, right? And, you know, people might say, well, now that it's illegal, you're not going to be texting while driving. So therefore, there's going to be fewer fatalities or even accidents on the road. But there's also an interesting conception of justice in this. And I wanted to actually ask you, Dan, what you think about that? Well, it reminds me of the movie Minority Report. And they have this notion of pre crime, where it's like if you could somehow predict what who's going to commit what crime, and then so you can, you know, bring them put them in jail beforehand. And I think that pre crime is fundamentally against the American conception of justice that that what what what liberty is about is being accountable to the actual crimes that you do, not the crimes that you may do. And I think I think the slogan, no victim, no crime is a good slogan, because basically, it's the idea that you can't really predict who what is going to be risky behavior and and what what is not going to be risky behavior. And of course, in Minority Report, they have this technology that allows them to foresee who is thinking about committing whatever kind of crime. We obviously don't have the benefit of that technology, but it appears to be something that they're looking for by outlawing what they believe is a serious precondition to a problem or a crime. I think one one interesting thing about that, because I agree with that, I think that there's the difficulty or the challenge to that position a little bit is that, you know, then you start, you know, thinking about maybe we should live in a world where there's there's no indicators or precursors or anything like that that we ever make illegal. And so that that leads to yeah, and I've seen some people make this argument, which is, you know, not very popular is that even drunk driving should be okay, as long as people don't actually hurt somebody, which is pretty, pretty tough sell for a lot of people. And also, obviously, there are behaviors that can be more risky than others. Well, there's some alcoholics who are more dangerous when they haven't had a drink. So that's that's part of that. You can go down that road and make some of those kinds of arguments. Of course, I don't know how effective those arguments are going to be with most people, but but the thing that's interesting to me about this is that you should be able to see I would be much more in favor of police actually watching for erratic behavior. So like not not to say, oh, you're on the phone or I saw you texting, but to say, how's your driving? Yeah, are you weaving? I saw you cross the line. Did you cross the line? Are you speeding up and slowing down in a way that's not very predictable? Because that's the hazardous behavior. That is the hazardous behavior, right? And that's also something that you as a cop, I think I'm not a cop. I can't entirely make this claim. But I would say like, it should be easier to see that, right? Then it would be to see whether or not somebody was on the phone, or they were applying lipstick, or they were rummaging around in their console or whatever unless you make direct eye contact with them, Sean, all the phones in the hand. Unless you look at the police officer across the street. No, but but that's what that's what I would think, because then it's not pre crime anymore, then it is a tangible thing that you could say you were driving erratically and recklessly. And that's the problem. I care that you are driving recklessly. So let me spot that. And then if it's because it's you're on a cell phone, or because you were lost in thought, or because you're tired, or what who cares? I don't really care about that part. I care that you're like, you know, not in your lane. Yeah, which by the way happens to me every day in Atlanta is somebody like, and I just think that like the truly the fully non pre crime approach is that if you actually hurt someone, then then you are liable. And that is deterred because of your personal liability, but especially because of your insurance company's personal liability, or liability, and that they then are incentivized to have policies that, you know, reward good behavior and punish bad behavior, especially the different premiums that they charge. Well, so that's a good point, Dan. So who ultimately is responsible for safety? I would submit on the road, right? I would submit it's the individual operating the vehicle, right? But there are also other parties involved. You mentioned the insurance company. Well, I feel like it's interesting because I think that if we think about insurance in a positive way, it is there to it is there obviously to make it easier for us to drive. But I'm thinking that the police charging you for having your cell phone in your hand and them reporting that to your insurance company, that's kind of just this process that has allowed the insurance company to determine your premium in such a way, right? So your premium might go up if they report that you have tickets. But if you think about removing if you think about removing the enforcement component of that, and the authority component of that, like the government authority component of that insurance is then incentivized to create new and innovative ways to make sure you're a safe driver, right? Which is so much more meaningful to me. And I think could be so much better than a policeman just saying I saw a cell phone in your hand. I think that you're right in saying that in some way, the insurance company could create a method by which they keep track of your driving and progressives even done that with the safe driving little insert thing. Yeah, I'm talking about little device that goes in there and measures how many hard breaks you have. Yeah, and my friend's insurance actually went down and I'm not kidding. She literally she refused to take her car out past like 8pm because that affected the price and things like that. And it's like, this is such a cool way to improve driving. What's fascinating to me about those approaches is that they're really dynamic and they're liable to change depending on, you know, we might get self driving cars or we might get, I mean, we're talking during our pre-production meeting about just the incredible advancement in safety technology in cars and like, you know, warning sensors and all these other things that laws don't do a very good job of accommodating, you know, because they're not market participants. Lawmakers are not market participants in the same way that insurance companies might be. And so they're not incentivized to quickly and efficiently make change. And of course legislation is one size fits all. And I think ultimately the responsibility does have to get down to the individual. Because every human action involves judgments about risk and versus reward. And just the very fact that we are driving in the first place, that we're moving around in these like two ton missiles that go at really high speeds with like these tiny little lines dividing us like all the time. It's incredible we don't have more accidents. Exactly. But then you think about all the people who have died, who die all the time, like they said that three, seven thousand highway fatalities, and you know, we could eliminate those if we just stop driving altogether, if we ban driving altogether, but then think of all the rewards that we're missing because of that, all the economic prosperity and all the lives that are saved by that economic prosperity. I mean, economic inefficiency really does cost lives because there are people around the world who are like right on the margin of starving. And the more the global economy is prosperous, then the fewer people actually starve. And so there are just so many trade-offs. And the same thing with texting that like you think about like, especially in Atlanta where this law is in place, that you imagine how many traffic jams we have and how many people are stuck in traffic for one or two hours, maybe even more every day. Right. And just being able to text someone at work that, you know, I'm going to be late. So, you know, change your plans accordingly and how much economic efficiency is. We're using your phone to look up where traffic is. I mean, it's all those little interactions that make, I mean, you know, innovation is Yeah, that stuff. I mean, especially the, you know, what you just said even about, as it's the point that I made earlier about the maps, I think that this is a thing that probably goes wildly underappreciated, which is it like the fact that you have technology that is adaptive, right, that says, here's your route to work. And oh, wait, there's a ton of traffic here, we're going to reroute you a slightly different direction. For me, and it varies by city, obviously, but for me, a lot of that takes me through side streets in Atlanta, it takes me through neighborhoods and stuff. And I rarely, now I rarely drive above 35, 40 miles an hour, but it's pretty consistent the entire way there. If I didn't have that map, I would never chance that, because it's so complex. The routes that I take through Atlanta are very, very difficult and memorizing that map would be pretty, it's pretty difficult. That's right. Whereas, I would take the highways, which are congested, fast, very dangerous, because there's a lot of people coming in or exiting the highway and all that stuff. I don't think, but that would be my option, right? Like if I didn't have this tool, that would be what I would do. Yeah, it ends up making life far less convenient. So we have about just 30 seconds before we're going to need to wrap up, but I have to ask the question, do you think in any reality that if this law were to be proven ineffective or that other data comes to the fore and they say, well, it's not necessary for us to ban texting, do you think that this sort of thing would ever be rolled back? Or is it just not in our political culture to do that these days? I don't think it's in our culture to ever remove regulation. Yeah, I think especially as much as there were interest groups that were invested in it before, like even now they're more invested in it. And it's going to be really a case of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. That's a good point. People will forget that it was ever any other way, very, very quickly. Right. But hey guys, I mean, prohibition, we got through it. We did. You were right. Maybe one day we can text again. One day. Well, be safe, drive safely, follow your best instincts and respect the road. And everyone throughout our listening land should do the same. Have a safe, productive, economically efficient and fun weekend. Thanks for listening to the FEEcast. We'll see you next week.