February 3, 2011 3:45PM # A Ban On “Walking While Wired”? By [Walter Olson](https://www.cato.org/people/walter-olson) --- SHARE New York state senator Carl Kruger (D‑Brooklyn) is crusading to ban pedestrians’ use of cellphones and other mobile devices while crossing the street. It’s for your own good, [you must understand](http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/01/25/ny-sen-wants-ban-on-chatting-while-crossing-street/): > “When people are doing things that are detrimental to their own well being, then government should step in.” *The Daily Caller* asked me to write an opinion piece about this proposal [so I just did](http://dailycaller.com/2011/02/03/distracted-while-strolling/). Excerpt: > Phone use on the street has become near-ubiquitous in recent years, yet over nearly all that time — nationally as in Gotham — pedestrian death rates were falling steadily, just as highway fatalities fell steadily over the years in which “distracted driving” became a big concern. > > > In the first half of 2010, the national statistics showed [a tiny upward blip](http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/27/tuning-out-new-york-california-and-oregon-propose-banning-cell-phone-and-ipod-use-by-pedestrians/) (0.4 percent), occasioned by a relative handful of fatalities in a few states. Even a spokesman for the Governor’s Highway Safety Association, Jonathan Adkins, seems to agree it’s premature to jump to conclusions: “You don’t want to overreact to six months of data,” [he told columnist Steve Chapman](http://reason.com/archives/2011/01/31/should-we-ban-walking-while-wi). > > > Like others who seek quasi-parental control over adults, Sen. Kruger tends to infantilize his charges. He told the Times: “We’re taught from knee-high to look in both directions, wait, listen and then cross. You can perform none of those functions if you are engaged in some kind of wired activity.” > > > This drew proper scorn from columnist Chapman: “Actually, you can perform all those functions and dance an Irish jig, even with text messages or rock music bombarding you.” That some ear bud devotees *don’t* take due caution is no reason to pretend they *can’t*. C.S. Lewis, Lily Tomlin and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood all get [walk-on parts as well](http://dailycaller.com/2011/02/03/distracted-while-strolling/). ##### Related Tags [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Regulation](https://www.cato.org/regulatory-studies), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).