To Protect and Swerve
Roadway accidents in the United States claims tens of thousands of lives each year and cost hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s no surprise, therefore, that state and local governments spend a lot of time to create laws and regulations that mandate our use of those roads. So it shouldn’t be surprising that, on May 4, 2021, members of the Ohio Senate Senate introduced a bill designed to penalize distracted driving. Had the bill already been law, it would have banned, per the AP, “all hand-held uses of a phone, from sending a text to checking Facebook to punching in an address on a mapping app.” You could still make a phone call, provided you weren’t holding your phone at the time (and the law, again per the AP, provided a “‘one-swipe’ exception to allow people to answer in-coming calls and then disconnect them”) but otherwise, the idea was simple — don’t use your phone and drive.
And on that very same day, a state senator attended a meeting and, in doing so, well — let’s start with a picture.
That’s Andrew Brenner working out of what looks at first like his home office. The spring of 2021 was still during the COVID-19 pandemic and many workplaces allowed, encouraged, or required people to work remotely, and Brenner’s was no different — he was attending a meeting of the Ohio state Controlling Board (which manages the budget) via Zoom, just like the other seven attendees. But there’s something weird about Brenner’s home office, if you look carefully. It’s a virtual background — there isn’t actually a credenza or a wall of photos behind him — which isn’t that uncommon. But his office chair has a feature few do: a seatbelt.
While his colleagues in other meetings were introducing legislation to prevent distracted driving, Brenner was taking a Zoom call while, well, driving.
The issue didn’t come up at the meeting, a snippet of which can be seen via NBC News, here. But if you look at the faces of some of the other participants, some almost certainly noticed — the smirks all but speak for themselves — and the story of the state Senator who was driving while Zooming travelled faster than his car did. Within days, it was national news.
Brenner defended his actions saying “I was paying attention to the driving and listening to it. I had two meetings that were back to back that were in separate locations. And I’ve actually been on other calls, numerous calls, while driving. Phone calls for the most part but on video calls, I’m not paying attention to the video. To me, it’s like a phone call.” And as City Beat points out, there’s reason to believe him — “the state senator began the meeting in a parked vehicle,” so it wasn’t like he was actually handling his phone while the car was in motion.
But that said, he probably should have been more transparent — he could have told his colleagues that he was on the road and needed to take the call by phone. It’s certainly safer than glancing at the camera here and there. And, in his defense, he could also made the driving infraction worse — he could have hidden where he was better by not donning a seatbelt. But thankfully, he decided to follow that rule.
Bonus fact: For years, an Ohio judge named Dean L. Wilson held a day’s worth of drunk driving trials at a local high school, giving students a first-hand view of how the law handles people who drive while intoxicated. The idea was to provide a cautionary tale to the teens — if you drink, don’t drive. But in 2014, as the Columbus Dispatch reported, Judge Wilson hit a bus while driving and was pulled over on the suspicion of driving drunk. When he refused a breath test, and was arrested. But the story may not be as ironic as it sounds — officials later dropped the drunk driving charges, finding a lack of evidence showing the judge was impaired. The judge did, however, plead guilty to the misdemeanor of leaving the scene of an accident.
From the Archives: How Hollywood and Harvard Partnered to Save Lives: The main story is about how seatbelts came to be the norm in the United States. The bonus fact has an note about Ohio’s special license plates for those who drive while intoxicated.