You might have noticed the news item last week that our state Senate passed an update to the cell phone law to make it a “primary offense” to use a cell phone while driving. I’m sure you’re all resting easier now that this public menace is finally under control. The streets will finally be safe again!

Except it isn’t true.

In fact, collisions in Washington have been going down in this state consistently in the past several years before the cell phone law took effect last July (down about 10 percent since 2006). In the meantime, the number of cell phone subscribers has increased by nearly the same percentage.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that at any given moment, 3 percent of drivers are talking on hand-held cell phones (it seems higher when you look around in traffic). They also said that 73 percent of people with cell phones in their cars have used them while driving.

So, if the number of cell phone users have gone up, why haven’t accidents increased exponentially? There are more cars on the road, and more cell phones in use, but collisions are still down. If we’re all yapping on our phones while driving, shouldn’t we have to hang up long enough to drive around all these accidents?

State Sen. Tracey Eide of Federal Way is riled up enough to push this bill through, but her motivation for doing this isn’t clear. She claims that a ban is necessary because “it’s a safety issue”.

But the supposed benefit of increased safety hasn’t been established. New York state has had a cell phone ban in place for several years, but the number of collisions there has increased by 9 percent since 2006.

If we truly cared about safety, we’d lower all of the speed limits to school-zone levels (we’re already there during rush hour anyway). We’d increase the speeding fines to $1000 for the first offense, and revoke your license on the second. The same penalties could be imposed for someone who was on the phone while causing an accident.

We don’t do that because we silently maintain a nice balance between safety, productivity and economic needs. It’s not something we like to talk about, but as a society, we’re not outraged by the 2500 serious injuries and 500 deaths each year in Washington due to collisions.

So if this law won’t increase public safety, then why are we spending legislative time passing cell phone bans instead of working on a budget deficit of over $2 billion? Because it’s easier than raising taxes.

The income tax idea is going nowhere, smokers are cutting back, businesses are actively resisting business and occupation tax increases, and another increase in the sales tax will cause it to hit the psychologically important 10 percent rate in King County (that’s when the populist outrage will really start).

New York state has issued over 1.2 million traffic tickets for cell phone use while driving since 2001. That’s money just waiting to be had from a problem that doesn’t really exist. Armed with a few laboratory studies (not real-world data), 33 of our state senators found a fake villain to demonize and created a $124 ticket for them.

The price is set there because it’s just enough to hurt, but not nearly enough to be a real deterrent for “unsafe” behavior. You’re not going to stop using your phone; you’re just going to learn to drop it faster when you see the cops. Let’s just call it what it is; a behavior tax.

I’m ready for real discussions on road safety, deficit reductions and better tax models. I just wish that our state legislators felt the same way.