Lawrence Kansas is considering a complete ban on talking in cars. Well, talking on a cell phone that is. Whereas most bans require a hands-free kit or ear bud, in the Lawrence ban not even hands-free kits would be allowed. Proponents of the measure say that it's the conversation that's distracting, not the phone itself.

You can ban cell phones if you want, but people are still gonna have accidents. The real problem with car accidents is the drivers. You ban drivers and the accident rate drops to zero almost immediately.

Of course all that assumes that people actually obey the ban. In New York, that's not the case.

A study of the New York state ban found that hand-held cell phone use by drivers dropped by about half during the first months following the ban. But one year after the ban had been in place, hand-held cell phone usage among drivers had climbed to virtually the same rate as before the ban.

In Washington, D.C., though, hand-held cell phone usage went down about 50 percent following its ban and has remained below pre-ban levels. But enforcement activity in Washington, D.C., is aggressive. Tickets for cell phone violations there represent 8 percent of all moving violations compared with 4 percent in New York, according to studies compiled by the institute.

The difference is that none of the drivers in D.C. are D.C. residents. The Washington City Council is uses fines as a back-door commuter tax. Besides once you find good parking in D.C., you never move your car again any way.

In related ban-news, the lovely Bitter reports that the City of Minneapolis wants to ban "strangers" from "walking in alleys".