Libertarian Perspective
The Road to Highway Safety
Anthony Gregory
Tue, 19 Sep 2006

Governor Schwarzenegger has signed a bill forbidding motorists from talking on cell phones while driving, making California the fourth state to enact such a law.

The argument for the new law is that cell phones are the number-one accident-causing distraction. The law makes an exception for emergency calls and headsets, but it levies a fine of $20 for a first-time offense, with $50 for each offense thereafter.

This penalty raises some questions. If cell phone distractions cause so many deaths on the highway, why is the fine so low? And what about other distractions, such as eating while driving, adjusting the radio, or talking with passengers? Is using a phone with an earpiece really less of a diversion? And to what extent can we tolerate a government telling us what to do while driving?

The danger of dying on the roads is real, of course. As Reason magazine's Ronald Bailey put it: "[I]n 2003 about 45,000 Americans died in motor accidents out of a population of 291,000,000. So, according to the National Safety Council this means your one-year odds of dying in a car accident are about one out of 6500. Therefore, your lifetime probability (6500 ÷ 78 years' life expectancy) of dying in a motor accident is about one in 83." You are 15 times more likely to die in a car accident than from a terrorist attack.

Why so little attention to the highway danger? Perhaps it's because the government itself is in charge. When something managed by the private sector—tainted hamburgers or spinach, faulty electronics, defective toys or whatever—leads to even a tiny percentage of the deaths attributable to the roads, public interest groups and politicians scream out for endless hearings and new regulations. These threats are not to be trivialized, but they pale in comparison to the hazard of government-managed roads. The government, however, doesn't like too much attention given to this situation and only pushes through such small reforms as seatbelt laws and cell phone restrictions, never attacking the fundamental problem.

The real problem is that the government has no institutional incentive to make roads safe. When a business runs something and people die, it's a scandal, resulting in damaged reputation, litigation, and maybe even prosecution. The government has no such liability. As economist Walter Block, professor at Loyola University in New Orleans and one of the nation's experts on roads, has concluded, "Public sector operation is responsible for an inordinate number of the tens of thousands of road fatalities which occur every year, and the sooner this can be stopped, the sooner this carnage will cease (or, at least be radically reduced)."

The answer? Privatize the roads. Put them in the hands of companies that will be held responsible for their successes and failures, incur the costs and reap the benefits. The optimal rules of the road to ensure safety without being unreasonably invasive or wasteful will better be discovered by the free market than by government.

The hurdles to privatization are not insignificant, but the feat is not at all impossible. Santa Clara University economics professor Daniel Klein points out that private enterprise and community initiative, not government, dominated highway construction in the 19th century, building and operating tens of thousands of miles of roads. It could be done again. A wonderful book edited by Gabriel Roth, Street Smart: Competition, Enterpeneurship, and the Future of Roads, has just been published by The Independent Institute, addressing all the objections to privatizing roads, explaining how roads could be cleaner, more efficient, cheaper, more accessible—and, most important, safer—if handled by the private sector. They would also have the advantage of not being politicized, riddled with corrupt cronyism in their construction and maintenance. People wouldn't be forced to pay outrageous taxes for pork-barrel projects, nor have their private homes seized by the government to make way for such projects.

As long as the government maintains the roads, there will be massive highway death and no one held responsible. There will be onerous regulations, prohibiting activity that might not even be dangerous, while missing the underlying problem. There will be graft and tragedy.

California is a legislative model to the nation, and its new cell phone law will probably be emulated rapidly by other states. Better that it blaze the trail toward real road safety, by letting the private sector take responsibility. Only then can we expect the roads to become safe and efficient like the other sectors of the economy free from political control.