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Talking on a cellphone while driving is a remarkably foolish thing to do. Unless your powers of concentration are far beyond those of most mortals, you cannot pay adequate attention to controlling your vehicle while conducting a conversation.

Passing a law against it, however, wouldn’t help much.

The Iowa Legislature is discussing a bill that would impose a $30 fine on any driver nabbed while chatting – and would still allow earpiece phones. Not much of a fine, not much of a chance that many offenders would ever be caught. You can drive for weeks without seeing a state trooper – or even a city police car, in many parts of Iowa – and drivers factor that into their decisions.

We already have laws against speeding, driving while intoxicated, running stop signs and failure to signal. The net result: About 35,000 Americans die every year in traffic accidents.

Laws seem to be no match for bad judgment.

That doesn’t mean that we should just give up and let cars become rolling living rooms. (In addition to phone yakkers, you can occasionally see a driver reading or checking a laptop computer.)

Instead of chipping away with laws like the cellphone proposal, it’s time to look for bigger, better ways to make our roads safer. Technology might be the only hope.

We’ve already seen how technology can be used to prevent drunken drivers from getting behind the wheel.

Maybe there’s a way to prevent cellphone conversations without eliminating true emergency applications.

Are we ready to give up some of our cherished American freedom of the road in return for less carnage?

What we’ve done so far in the name of traffic safety is nearly a joke. If terrorists want to kill more Americans, all they have to do is find a way to lower the price of gasoline to 50 cents a gallon so we drive even more. Or maybe they could call us on our cellphones during rush hour.