In today’s world of searing rhetoric and bombastic bumper stickers, you might hear or see two conflicting slogans: “Hang up and drive” and “You’ll take my cell phone when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.” Yet when the dust has cleared from a horrendous car accident, both messages just might serve the same end.

That end is safe driving without using a cell phone or PDA to text, dial, redial, read texts, send texts, talk endlessly or otherwise take your mind and eyes away from the road while you act like a doctor who’s on call 24/7. Would you try passing a driver’s license test while diverted this way? No, and for good reason. You could kill yourself or someone else. Haven’t done so yet? As they say, always a first time.

Starting Sept. 1, a new Texas law drives that message home, making it illegal to use a cell phone — except for a hands-free device — while driving in school zones where such signs are posted. Those signs, sadly, are the rub — more on that later.

Sure, we don’t like to be told what to do, especially when we’ve never outgrown that childhood resistance. But when common sense fails and new needs arise, legislation must enter where realization lapses. It’s for our own good, and in this case it makes perfect sense.

Except for some key things. For instance, if cell phone driving dangers merit a law, why is it limited to school zones? Is every life not sacred? And can’t school-age children also be killed by distracted drivers when they’re far from school?

Texas’ new state law also trumps previous city laws, as in Houston suburb West University, where even hands-free cells in school zones were banned. Now, they’re not. Thanks, Austin lawmakers. You must have missed the studies showing hands-free devices are just as distracting as hand-held phones.

But at least the new law is a baby step in the right direction, a direction which must include educating the public about the dangers of driving while using cell phones. Then common sense — and voluntary compliance — must prevail, as they did when we became a nation of seatbelt users.

To that end, graphic public service videos are circulating online — with two gruesome ones from the UK — showing how one second’s distraction can cause a lifetime of agony, or even end a life. And with alarming auto accident stats mounting, even Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood is calling for a national summit on distracted drivers. This is serious stuff, folks, and the bandwagon is rolling.

That’s why “Hang up the drive” is now Texas law, at least in school zones sporting such signs — and there’s the rub. Texas’ biggest cities of Houston, San Antonio and Dallas have thousands of school zones, and signs and installation can cost up to $300 each. That hurdle means those cities’ schools are opening without such signs — and thus, without the new law’s protection.

“The law is well intentioned, and from a safety standpoint, obviously we’re supportive,” said Jeff Weatherford, Interim Deputy Director of Public Works for City of Houston. “But it would cost us about $1.4 million to post signs in our almost 8,000 school zones, and right now we don’t have that money.”

San Antonio and Dallas face the same dilemma thanks to a law which seems to have been rushed through — and may have the fingerprints of the cell phone industry all over it. By mandating signs which cities can’t afford, it’s no law at all.

As for militant cell users who will only give up their obsession when they’re cold and dead, well, that can occur if they keep talking and texting instead of focusing on driving. Cell phone distractions are killing thousands of Americans, including many drivers whose last act on Earth was to text a friend with an urgent message such as, “Did UC Idol last nite?”

Jim S. Adler & Associates is on the side of safe driving. That means we hang up and drive. That means we relinquish use of our cell phones and PDAs when it’s prudent. And that means we’ll fight for your rights if you or a loved one is harmed by a distracted driver. To us, providing a “tough, smart lawyer” isn’t just a slogan or a bumper sticker motto. It’s what we do.

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