Now I am less worried about talking and driving and more worried about Ash's alcohol-drenched, over-heated-in-the-hot-tub heart giving out.
To address A-Cap's point, for those of you who don't know, a guy murdered my grandmother and stepgrandfather 12 hours after being released from prison on prior drug and armed robbery convictions. Here's a case where the cops did their job, rounded up a guy, he served his time (3 years), and yet the system still failed us. There's only so much we can do to control the "criminal element." The guy got caught (again) and now faces the death penalty (which I oppose). It's not the police's fault -- for cripe's sake, my uncle is a cop in the precinct where my grandmother lived -- this guy simply couldn't be rehabilitated, at least not in the amount of time given as a maximum sentence under our current laws.
I would prefer that the whole situation hadn't happened. But it seems to me like that kind of random act is a lot less preventable than, for instance, the dozens of accidents a year that occur because the driver is distracted on the phone. A junkie with a violent streak in need of a drug fix is not the kind of person you can dissuade from breaking a law; an otherwise good person who isn't aware of how dangerous driving and talking can be is much more malleable. Solve the problems that make the most impact with the least effort first -- I would think that would be second nature to an economist, no?
Case in point: my dad has always been spotty at best about wearing his seatbelt, even after an accident in which he was mildly injured 12 years ago. But I found out today that he got a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt six months ago, and he's been religious about wearing it ever since. (See? It's hereditary.) He doesn't believe a seatbelt will keep him from dying in an accident, just like many people don't believe that talking on their phones while driving is dangerous, but he DOES believe that if he continues to not buckle up, eventually he'll get caught again. That's the kind of motivation some people (myself included) require.