Opinion

No Phone Police

By SCOTT T. HARDS

Like millions of other people around the world, I'm addicted to my portable phone. Next to the Internet, the low-cost, compact portables of today are probably the most important communications invention of the 1990s. They've revolutionized business, saved thousands of lives and made life more pleasant in general — especially if you're a teenager with a lot of talkative friends!

But recently, more and more places seem to be trying to make me feel guilty about using my phone. For instance, many train lines now make announcements that you should "avoid the use of portable phones so as not to disturb other passengers." Now wait a minute. I've been annoyed by many things on trains, but portable phones are far from the worst.

What about rambunctious groups of high school kids, clutches of chatterbox middle-aged women, or the smelly drunks so prevalent on Friday and Saturday nights? I've never heard any announcements asking riders to "avoid speaking to other people" or saying "don't use our trains when you've had too much to drink." So why single out portable phones for public scorn when there are so many other ill-mannered train behaviors?

That's what this whole thing is about: manners. Speaking in a loud voice when you're around others is bad manners regardless of whether it's a regular conversation or a telephone conversation. So are telephone ringers set to very high volumes (nearly all phones sold today have vibrators to silently inform you of a call. Use them!). When I use my phone, I don't forget my manners. So, if the train company wants to remind me to keep my voice down when talking on their train (which I do), then I'm all ears. But I won't turn my phone off. It's just too important to me.

There are also places where phones are being blacklisted for other reasons. Airplanes and hospitals ask you to turn off your phone to avoid possible interference with their own equipment. Since a malfunction in aircraft or hospital systems could cost lives, this sounds like a sensible idea. But wait a minute. What do they mean, "possible interference?" In this modern world, it would be very easy to test such equipment to see if radio transmissions in the frequencies used by portable phones do indeed cause problems. There doesn't have to be any gray zone. Somebody, please do the research and set the record straight!

Lastly, there's a move afoot to make using your phone while driving illegal. Of course, the worry is that people don't pay attention to the road as well when they're talking on the phone, or that it prevents people from keeping both hands on the wheel. While there's some truth to the former concern, the same logic also applies to any in-car conversation with the driver, and even to listening to the radio! And you certainly cannot regulate that.

The latter concern is more valid, however, and that's why many states in the United States have mandated so-called hands-free speaker systems for phone use in the car. These are widely available in Japan, too, and cost less than ¥10,000. So instead of banning phone use, why not just make a hands-free system mandatory?

Portable phones certainly have their rough spots, but if everybody who uses one just applies common sense, their benefits far outweigh any problems. So please stop telling me to turn mine off. I'm not listening!

Shukan ST: Jan. 15, 1999

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