Dumb switch

In today's dumb ideas news, Dutch traffic safety organization VVN has floated the plan to have smartphones automatically blocked in cars traveling at a speed of 30 km/h or more. The nonprofit calls for the government to force inclusion of a feature enforcing this in new phones by law, as it deems voluntary measures such as are available on some phones already not far reaching enough.

See America, you're not even able to reach an agreement over gun control and here we're working on determining when people can use their phones. We're so progressive!

(In before "phones don't kill people.."!)

It's a dumb idea of course. While I doubt anyone'd deny mobile phone use in traffic is the cause of quite a few accidents, in the end this is yet another knee jerk "we don't like.. so ban!" reaction from an entity that's supposed to be focused on education, yet seems to have got it's mandate a bit confused.

Although a lot of people have been making fun of the technological feasibility of such a plan since it's been announced, technically I suppose a disabling mechanism on speed could be done. Your phone (or rather it's GPS receiver) is already subject to the CoCom limits after all. But aside from the hurdle of getting manufacturers to implement this and even assuming we pretend the rest of the world does not exist to get phones from, such limits could never distinguish between driver and passenger or even something like car or train travel. Not to mention how pervasive the use of these devices as a route finder or music player is, how this wouldn't do anything for other kinds of traffic participation like cycling.. etc, etc.

So was nobody technical available at VVN to point this out to them? Do they just not care and think stuff they see as a threat should just be banned? Maybe they expect a "Manhattan Project" type of initiative would solve these issues?

Personally I'm going to go with them trying to stir some controversy to raise awareness, a tactic that's annoyingly prevalent over here these days. Because nobody's that dumb right? Or if they are they should at least be fitted with some sort of disabling mechanism every time they're about to say something stupid. I'll get the press release ready, someone get the tech sorted out ok? And line up the politicians.