Texting About A Texting Ban

In something of an irony, the Transportation Department considered comments from an online dialogue promoted via text-messaging service Twitter to finalize a new rule that bans commercial truck and bus operators from texting while driving. The regulation, which was published in Monday's Federal Register, cites comments contributed by Cornell Law School's pilot initiative to crowdsource rulemaking, or tap the wisdom of the online masses to inform policy.

Regulation Room, a non-government website maintained by Cornell University, translated the bureaucratic language in DOT's initial proposal, released in April, into plain English on a blog moderated by law school students. The goal of the project was to encourage people who do not usually read the Federal Register to participate in the policy-making process. The Cornell e-Rule-Making Initiative posed questions on the blog, promoted Regulation Room through social networking services and synthesized the input received into formal comments.

Monday's rule mentions Regulation Room's input twice: once to note that CeRI's contribution was among the 400 comments received and another time to state that DOT rejected the group's advice to demand all cell phones be programmed to automatically disable texting capabilities when a phone hits 5 miles per hour.

Here's the crowdsourced solution that didn't pass muster with DOT:

Disabling Cell Phones

Many commenters suggested using technology to limit a driver's ability to operate a mobile telephone when driving by having the phone automatically disabled in a moving vehicle. The [Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance] stated that electronic devices, whether they are built into the dash or nomadic devices, need to have an ``in-motion'' mode to prevent their use (unless in emergency situations) during vehicle movement. CeRI commenters suggested requiring all cell phones to be programmed to shut down texting, e- mail, and internet functions whenever the phone travels faster than 5 or 10 miles per hour (mph) and stated that manufacturers should be required to add such functionality to all cell phones.

FMCSA Response:

Requiring that such capabilities be installed is beyond the scope of this rulemaking. However, carriers are free to explore and implement such capabilities as they see fit.