Cell phone driving rules, please
It’s common sense that talking
and texting on cell phones is a
distraction to safe driving;
Wisconsin should enact restrictions

7/23/08

Data about the effects of cell phone use while driving are accumulating into a mountain of information that ranges from damning to inconclusive to contradictory. But no one should need a study to know that talking and texting on a cell phone are distractions that make driving more dangerous for everyone. The evidence is obvious on the road every day.

When erratic steering, often from a highway center line to fog line, and erratic speed, from too slow to too fast, are observed, odds are the driver is talking on a cell phone or, worse, entering numbers or typing a text message.

It’s common sense that this variant of inattentive driving can cause accidents.

It’s an oft-repeated fallacy that you can’t legislate common sense. Of course you can; otherwise we wouldn’t have seat belt laws. Common sense in cell phone use needs to be legislated in Wisconsin.

Twenty-five states have laws regulating drivers’ use of cell phones, though few have outright bans. More than 50 foreign countries, however, make it illegal to use cell phones while driving.

There are other signs of growing awareness that it can be dangerous to use a cell phone while driving. A number of American companies have rules that forbid employees to conduct business on a phone while driving. Exxon Mobil and Shell ban all use of cell phones by employees while driving.

Some employer advocacy groups recommend a policy that requires employees to pull off the road to make business cell phone calls.

If businesses can see the risk, why can’t the state of Wisconsin? The companies’ vision on this issue has been clarified by the courts—

a number of firms have been held liable in auto accidents caused by employees doing business on cell phones while driving.

Two proposals in the Wisconsin Legislature fall well short of a general cell phone driving ban, but have merit as a starting point in regulating this hazard. One would ban cell phone use by drivers younger than 18. The other would ban text messaging while driving.

Who could find fault with either of these restrictions? Beginning drivers are statistically the most dangerous on the road and prone to distractions (which is why current law limits the number of young people that can be in a young driver’s car). Text messaging requires drivers to look at their cell phones instead of the road as they laboriously push keys on a miniature keyboard.

If a cell phone driving ban, or a prohibition of hand-held phones while allowing the hands-free variety, is not palatable to the Legislature, bad cell phone driving should be addressed in other ways. Existing laws, such as those regulating inattentive driving, might, for example, be amended to provide additional penalties for drivers arrested for traffic violations when cell phone use is a factor.

We don’t need to list the benefits that have accrued from the invention of the cell phone. They are many and significant. But it’s also fair to assume that much cell phone use is a trivial pursuit, a way to pass time by talking (and talking and talking).

But whether the talk is trivial or important, it’s hardly a sin against Americans’ libertarian instincts to make reasonable rules that limit the gabbing in places where it could cause an accident—like behind the wheel of a motor vehicle.

The bright side
Downtown Port Washington has
its share of problems, but an
encouraging series of positive developments is offsetting
the setbacks

7/16/08

Another restaurant has gone out of business, an old bank building remains blighted by a failed demolition attempt, a three-story building that until last year housed a furniture and appliance store remains mostly vacant, as does the expensively remodeled Smith Bros. building.

That summarizes the bad news about downtown Port Washington. The good news is going to take more space. Here it is, by the numbers:

1. Main Street. The city has been accepted into the state’s Main Street program. Gov. Jim Doyle’s announcement that Port Washington has been named a Main Street community means it will get state expertise in a program designed to attract and retain businesses and revitalize the downtown economy. The significance of Main Street status goes beyond that: It’s a vote of confidence in the city. Communities chosen for the program are those with the best potential for success. The selection committee gave Port its highest rating, an acknowledgement of the city’s ongoing effort at downtown improvement

2. Best lake town. Port Washington has just been named Best Town on a Lake in Wisconsin. The award, by the Wonders of Wisconsin Best Towns Committee, recognizes not just the city’s natural beauty, but what it has made of it with recreational opportunities, downtown sreetscaping, festivals and delightful small-town ambience.

3. New Franklin Street. With its wider sidewalks, artfully textured with paving stones and lined with gingko trees, flourishing flowers in handsome planters up and down the street, decorative crosswalks that cater to pedestrian traffic downtown and a host of other amenities, not to mention provision for outdoor dining at a number of restaurants, Port Washington’s recreated main business street has exceeded expectations as the foundation for downtown progress. Pre-construction complaints that ranged from the uninformed (the street would be too narrow for trucks and boat trailers) to the absurd (the trees would attract messy birds) have now been relegated to the too-much-ado-about-nothing category.

4. The Harborwalk. With the opening of a new section along the west harbor slip, the city’s lakefront walkway now extends from the north beach to Fisherman’s Park, one of the finest examples of public access to Lake Michigan in the state, offering splendid opportunities to residents and visitors for walking and view appreciation. The Harborwalk is another jewel in a necklace of public lakefront improvements that includes the downtown marina and Rotary Park.

5. Downtown events. The attrition of retail businesses that drew people downtown is being offset by a series of events that are proving to be a magnet for residents and visitors alike. The farmers market and Christmas on the Corners are hometown favorites. Visitors and residents flock to the biggest downtown event, Fish Day, which received two accolades in recent weeks in a mention by Forbes magazine as one of the reasons Ozaukee County was chosen as the second best county in the country in which to live and its selection as runnerup as Wisconsin’s Best Festival Weekend. This summer’s much expanded Port Washington Maritime Heritage Festival, centered around one of the summer’s biggest gatherings of tall ships, is expected to be attended by tens of thousands of people.

Downtown Port Washington’s glass is a lot more than half full.

Bred to bite
The necessary shooting of
two attacking dogs in
Port Washington shows the
consequences of bringing
potentially vicious dogs into
a community

7/9/08

What are the odds of attacking dogs being shot and killed by police twice in a month in a small town’s business district?

About the same as the odds of Ralph Nader being elected president, we’d guess.

Yet it happened in Port Washington. On May 26, a 90-pound pit bull bolted away from his owner and attacked a golden retriever being walked on a leash so ferociously that a city policeman felt he had no choice but to shoot the dog to protect people who were gathering nearby for the Memorial Day parade.

On June 27, a 100-pound Italian mastiff attacked a man returning to his car after dining at a Port Washington restaurant, biting him numerous times. When a police officer arrived, the dog threatened him, and he shot the animal.

These were shockingly violent events, witnessed by a number of people. In retrospect, what remains alarming about them is not the conduct of the police, but that of the dogs and their owners.

The police officers acted quickly and decisively to protect the public. In the first case, the pit bull attack, it was good luck that Lt. Mike Davel was able to get to the scene while the attack was still going on. He was driving nearby when he heard what he described as “this godawful scream.”

Police were not called in time to help the victim of the second biting dog incident, who finally found refuge in his car and was treated for his wounds later at a Milwaukee hospital. But when Officer Jason Bergin responded to a 911 call from a passerby, he acted to prevent further attacks by the dog in the area near Veterans Park, where people were gathering for a Friday night movie.

The difficulty of the challenge facing police in situations like these should not be underestimated. Using a firearm as part of a policeman’s job is an act fraught with consequences ranging from the possibility of injuring bystanders to public condemnation should the decision to use deadly force prove wrong. In the dog attacks, the Port officers made the right decisions with professional dispatch.

The owners of the dogs, on the other hand, made dubious decisions when they chose to own dogs bred to be violent. Pit bulls share with Rottweilers the distinction of being the breeds most often involved in fatal attacks on humans. Italian mastiffs are aggressive animals bred to be guard dogs.

Ownership of such dogs, particularly in a community setting, comes with a responsibility to keep the animals under control—a responsibility that both owners in the Port Washington incidents failed to carry out.

The pit bull’s owner, who said the dog was good with people but hated other dogs, could not hold the dog back when he went after the retriever, and in fact was pulled to the ground and injured.

The owner of the mastiff said the dog was acting “kind of ornery” while being walked on the bike trail, before he slipped out of his collar and injured a man walking innocently on the sidewalk.

Dog bite incidents such as these have moved a number of municipalities to pass laws that carry strong penalties for owners of uncontrolled dogs and in some cases even restrict ownership of certain breeds.

Port Washington doesn’t have such laws, but two disturbing events have sent an unmistakable message that should alert everyone to the consequences of introducing potentially vicious animals into community life.

Keep and bear
The Suspreme Court has carved
the right of law-abiding citizens
to own guns in stone; may it
pave the way for progress on
getting guns away from criminals