The other day I was driving down a city street in D.C. when I heard a stern male voice from the sidewalk yell out, “Put down that phone!” It was a policeman. You know who he was yelling at? Me. I did the manly thing, of course. I blamed my wife. I said she made me do it. It wasn’t a smart move. The male police officer was accompanied by a female officer, who failed to see the humor in my retort. Neither did my wife.

I mention the incident because there was a report out this week from an insurance-funded organization called the Highway Loss Data Institute, which concluded that the campaign against texting while driving is having no apparent impact on accidents if you compare accident rates in states with and without texting laws. The spin off of the report was that all of the attention being given to texting while driving is misdirected. The report came out, conveniently enough, right after Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s distracted driving summit.