@kevinlibin

(too long to fit in a tweet)

Back in June I looked into the nanny regulations and found its a lot more than just a "texting while driving" ban or a "distracted driving ban". For one thing, there is no exemption to phoning/texting/adjusting your navigation system while at a red light or stuck behind a train or otherwise at a standstill.

But on a deeper level its a "damn these kids and their new technology" law. The mere act of holding a phone (again, even while at a red light), even a phone that isn't even turned on, is now against the law. As I noted in the link, if you're holding an Apple its illegal. If you're holding an apple, its not. (There is no blanket ban on eating or drinking). If you use your phone at a red light to check the text message telling you your friend's new address, that's illegal. If you check an old-fashioned map (or, say, printed sheet of directions), that's legal.

Then its also elitist in the fanciest of new toys: if you have a 3rd party GPS system on your dashboard (or even, possibly, a radar detector), you cannot so much as touch it at any point in your trip without violating the law. If you have a regular cellphone, you're similarly banned from touching it. But go out and buy a newer vehicle with more bells and whistles, and you can get your bluetooth devices wired directly into the console, navigational aids become directly tied into the console, and suddenly you can operate them while driving (not just while at red lights) to your heart's content.

This is a very bad nanny-state law. And its own internal construction makes little sense.