New York State is apparently trying to ban texting whilst driving:

• NY State May Ban Text Messaging While Driving (Daily Exhumation)

Yeah, it turns out that not paying attention to where you’re going can be fatal if you’re driving along the Interstate at high speed.

Tests conducted on the driver after the fiery crash showed the primary cause of the accident was driver inattention due to the apparent text messaging. Alcohol was not a factor.

Oh, how horrifying!

Hey, I have an idea: rather than pass narrow and specific laws against every single manifestation of reckless driving, why don’t we just pass a law against reckless driving?  Sure, such a move would deprive those poor widdle politicians from taking gruesome advantage of every highway tragedy that comes along by passing nigh-meaningless overspecific tear-jerking legislation, but at least it’d save the rest of us from those negligent cage-jockeys whose recklessness has not yet been codified.  What if someone whips out a PSP whilst driving and starts playing Killzone?  Nobody would be safe!  It’s not specifically illegal yet!

Oh, wait: a reckless driving law already exists, doesn’t it?

Why would someone want to pass a law that duplicates a subset of a law that already exists?   Cheap political gain comes immediately to mind.  Never mind that when one of Leviathan’s tentacles — er, I mean, one of your elected representatives — tells you that all you need to be safe from a particular overblown danger is yet another law it (the tentacle) merely reinforces the power of the state in the minds of the grass-eaters (“They passed another law, George, we’ll be safe now”) without actually doing anything but waste time and money.

Better luck next election, folks.