I've just been listening to David Carr, Samizdatista and Libertarian Alliance Legal Affairs spokesman, talking on BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show on the subject of the new law banning the use of non-hands free mobile phones in cars in the UK.

Unfortunately, I was slightly late in hitting the record button on my radio so I can't reproduce his remarks verbatim, but David's basic point was that the use of a mobile phone in and of itself doesn't cause accidents; driving without due care and attention causes accidents and we have plenty of laws against that already.

Which is quite right.

I was rather glad that it was David on the phone-in rather than me because I tend to take the ultra anarcho-capitalist line that in an ideal world roads would be privatised and it would be up to the road owners to enforce whatever rules they liked. He is also a rather calmer and nicer-sounding person.

For what it's worth, I think that driving while using a mobile phone (hands-free or not) is, like driving after drinking, generally speaking, a dangerous thing to do. Some reports indicate that it is even more dangerous. But there are other ways of looking at this. Earlier this year Iain Murray, writing for Tech Central Station, suggested that the economic damage (which includes things like safer cars and better medical treatment, remember) might be greater than the saving in terms of safer roads.

UPDATE

Despite the link-fest above there was one I managed to miss. A rather important one in fact. This is what I wrote over a year ago:

And that is the key point: not that these laws are unnecessary but that they do real harm.