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Excerpt from "Priceless:
On Knowing the Price of Everything
and the Value of Nothing"
by Frank Ackerman & Lisa Heinzerling
Article re-printed from The San Diego Union-Tribune
December 21, 2003, Sunday
Excerpt from "Priceless: On Knowing the Price
of Everything and the
Value of Nothing"
By Frank Ackerman & Lisa Heinzerling
The New Press, 277 pages, Hardcover $25.95, Paperback
$16.95
Right up to the day they died, Russian immigrants
Mariaya Diment and Liya Murkes loved to take long
walks together along the oceanfront near the senior
residence where they lived in Santa Monica. One summer
day in the year 2000, Cheryl Chadwick, reportedly
talking on a cell phone while driving her Mercedes-Benz,
plowed into Diment and Murkes while they were
strolling, killing them both.
What happened to Mariya Diment and Liya Murkes is
not unusual, and almost certainly will become less
so; as many as 1,000 people a year now die in car
accidents caused by what some are calling "phoneslaughter."
Researchers have found that people who are talking
on cellular phones while driving are four times more
likely to get into car accidents than people who are
not -- about the same as the increased risk from driving
after several drinks (around the legal threshold for
drunk driving in most states). Ten years ago, only
10 million people worldwide had ever even used a cell
phone; by now, cell phone users number a billion and
counting. The vast majority of Americans with cell
phones talk on them while driving.
Most states, and many cities and towns, are deciding
whether to do something to prevent these accidents.
Some places have banned cell phone use while driving.
Others have used laws already on the books -- even
homicide laws -- to try to get at the problem.
Some of the country's most influential economists,
however -- based on research conducted with the help
of generous funding from wireless providers -- have
concluded these restrictions are a bad idea. Why?
Because the people who are talking while driving are
willing to pay a
lot to talk on the phone -- more than many people
who face deadly risks are willing to pay to avoid
the risk of being killed. What these researchers have
done is compare the price of phone calls made while
driving with the "price" of deadly risks.
Since risk is not, like cell phones and calling plans,
directly bought and sold in the marketplace, economists
have tried to find places where it is sold indirectly.
They have focused mainly on risky workplaces, where
extra wages are, in theory, required to convince workers
to accept increased risks of death. In comparing levels
of wages and risk, economists have estimated that
groups of workers doing dangerous jobs are paid, on
average, a total of about $5- to $6-million more,
per work-related death. By comparing the price of
cell phone use with the "price" of risky
work, economists have concluded that banning cell
phone use in cars makes no economic sense.
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