The impact of Chapel Hill’s Cell Phone Ban: “My car is my office, and my trucks are on the road constantly.”

Carolina Journal’s Karen McMahan writes here about reaction from business owners to Chapel Hill’s ban on using cell phones while driving — including hands-free phones.

The ban may force drivers to resort to a similar tactic by having to pull off the road so they can use their cell phone legally.

Dave Cotton, owner of AdvantaClean, a franchise that provides emergency water and fire restoration, mold remediation, and air duct cleaning services to customers in several counties in the Triangle area, told CJ the ban is frivolous.

Cotton said a CBS “This Morning” news crew followed him as he demonstrated how difficult it can be to find a place to pull over to use the phone safely, yet how easy it is to use one button or voice command.

“I’m not against a ban on hand-held devices,” Cotton said, “I just can’t understand why they’d ban hands-free. I’ve worked a lot in the Northeast where some areas had a ban on using hand-held devices, but they didn’t include Bluetooth.”

“My car is my office, and my trucks are on the road constantly. If I follow the letter of the law, I won’t be able to pick up the phone or press a button to answer a call. Missing a call can means thousands of dollars in lost business. With the types of emergencies my customers have, they need to reach a live person. If they don’t reach me, they’ll most likely go with the first live person they get,” Cotton said. He joked that even the original car phone had hands-free capability.

How Long Before 20-Somethings Realize They’re On The Hook For Our Entitlement Society?

Pete Peterson has teamed up with Bill Clinton on an effort called “Up to Us” to try to get college students to understand and care about deficits and economics.

Peterson says he’ll be dead long before the economic chickens come home to roost for people currently in college.

But that hasn’t stopped him from reaching across party lines and generations to team up with Clinton on a project to inspire young people to care about “America’s long-term fiscal and economic challenges.”

Last month, Peterson, Clinton, and Net Impact Chief Executive Officer Liz Maw announced a contest, starting this fall, in which teams from 12 colleges will create campaigns to raise awareness and inspire action.

Good luck. Sadly, many 20-somethings are actively supporting and voting for candidates whose policies explode the deficit and debt and expand eligibility for entitlements. Unless our policies change, ten years from now, these younger folks will wake up and wonder why they’re trapped in a fiscal nightmare.

4 Republicans, 2 Democrats Want To Replace Faison In Legislature

House District 50 Rep. Bill Faison is running for governor, which means the race to replace him in the legislature is especially interesting to watch even though the Orange/Chatham district is heavily Democratic. Why? Despite that Democratic tilt, four Republicans are running in the primary. Carolina Journal’s David Bass reports on the race here.