Monday night the Park Ridge City Council’s Committee of the Whole deadlocked – 3 aldermen (Don Bach, Robert Ryan and Frank Wsol for) to 3 aldermen (Joe Sweeney, Rich DiPietro and Jim Allegretti against) on a motion to send an ordinance to the full Council that would impose a $50 fine on drivers talking on hand-held cell phones.  Ald. Tom Carey was absent, and Mayor Schmidt is not allowed to break ties on COW votes.

The ordinance was not supported by Police Chief Frank Kaminski, who believes a state-wide ban would be more effective and enforceable than a local ordinance.  We agree with the Chief on that one.

But if you want to consider this issue at the level our elected officials did, consider the “reasoning” offered by Ryan and Allegretti for and against, respectively, the hand-held cell phone ban, courtesy of this week’s Park Ridge Herald-Advocate story (“Cell phone ban gets poor reception from aldermen on Monday,” August 10).

Ryan:  “I think there’s nothing wrong with Park Ridge taking a leadership position.  We’ve always done that and I would like to see us get back to doing that.  I would hate to see some child die because I didn’t act.”

Allegretti: “I talk on my cell phone a lot and I’ve never had an accident with it; I’ve never run anybody over and I’ve never turned a corner and nearly struck somebody.  I don’t think it’s that level of distraction that these studies say (cell phones) are.”

We challenge Mr. Ryan to identify all the “leadership position(s)” Park Ridge has taken on significant public issues over the past decade.  What the heck, we’ll give him the past two decades – if only because we feel sorry for a guy who is looking for “leadership” from a City still reluctant to let go of Prohibition.

As for Mr. Allegretti’s statements, even a cursory Internet search reveals numerous surveys and studies with a variety of results, almost all of which conclude that cell phone usage – both hand-held and hands-free – while driving is a significant distraction that increases the risk of auto accidents.  Then again, so is yelling at your misbehaving kids, putting on make-up, reading billboards, and a variety of other things that impair a driver’s concentration.

The debate is ongoing, however, on whether hands-free cell phone usage is significantly safer than hand-held usage.  A survey in the February 1997 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine found the difference between hands-held and hands-free cell phone safety usage to be “not significant,” and subsequent studies generally have concurred.   

But if safety is truly the reason behind the City Council exploring any kind of ban on cell phone use while driving, then why not ban all cell phone use while driving?  Why limit it to just hand-held phones – other than because hand-held usage is more readily provable by the police and, therefore, more likely to provide extra revenue for cash-strapped municipalities like Park Ridge? 

Hey, couldn’t those red-light cameras catch hand-held cell phone drivers red-handed?

If the public really wants to significantly increase road safety, it could start by demanding more stringent driving tests instead of the joke that passes for a licensing exam in Illinois today.  Or by demanding mandatory prison sentences and lifetime driving bans for people convicted of drunk driving, like they do in some other countries.  Or by raising the licensing age to 25, the age that most insurance companies use for determining the “adult” premium rate.

Those are weighty policy issues that don’t seem to be within the comfort zone of our public officials at the state or local level.  Which is probably just as well, because as of now this debate – at least on the City Council level – sounds more about good intentions than sound public policy considerations. 

And as perhaps the leading 19th Century American statesman, Daniel Webster, warned: “It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.”

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