Hands on the wheel

Less than two days from now the government will intrude even further into our lives.

Finally.

Oregon’s ban on using a handheld cell phone while driving takes effect Friday.

We don’t doubt this law will save lives.

But that’s not, per se, the reason we endorse it.

Oregon laws that require motorcyclists to wear helmets, and car drivers and passengers to wear seat belts, save lives, too.

The cell phone law, by contrast, is akin to the prohibition on driving while intoxicated. Both are designed to protect innocent people from others’ mistakes.

Besides which, the cell phone law constitutes an erosion of personal freedom that’s not so much negligible as it is irrelevant.

The law doesn’t outlaw drivers 18 and older from making or taking calls on their cell phone while driving. It just requires that they use a hands-free device.

And those devices are relatively cheap, and abundant. Complying with the new law is not only simple, it’s convenient.

Research shows that using a handheld cell phone can impair a driver’s ability as much as downing a few drinks.

Yet, although most people are wise enough to avoid driving when they’re intoxicated, there is no equivalent societal taboo about speeding down the freeway at 65 while trying to wedge a cell phone between your shoulder and ear.

And until now, in Oregon, there has been no equivalent legal taboo, either.

Perhaps we’re overly optimistic, but we hope the cell phone law, and the prospect of paying a $142 fine, will prompt people to treat driving, in the broadest sense, as the life-or-death responsibility that it is.

There are, after all, plenty of other activities that drivers distract themselves with but for which, as yet, there are no specific laws.

Eating, for instance. Or reading the newspaper. Or turning around to tell the kids in the back seat to pipe down.

Cell phones are so ubiquitous, of course, that they made an ideal, and appropriate, target for lawmakers.

If we’re lucky, this will be the last law of its kind we’ll need.