This New Year, I resolve with all my heart to ask someone to pass a law that forces me to do something I should be smart enough to do on my own.

Surely I’m not the only one who chuckled at the recent “Driving While Distracted” summit at UAB, which would have been better titled, “I Can’t Believe You Haven’t Figured This Out For Yourself By Now.”

The issue, of course, has been raised all over the country, most recently in Alabama due to the efforts of Representative Jim McClendon, who last legislative year introduced a bill to ban “texting” and driving.

“How dumb do you have to be to think this (texting and driving) is a good idea?” he told the Moody Chamber of Commerce in a recent meeting.

The issue, unfortunately, is a straw man. Nobody thinks sending a text message while driving is a good idea – how could they?

Similarly, I doubt anyone left on the planet thinks smoking is still a good idea. How much more research is necessary? How many more public service announcements?

I’m asking only because we keep pushing for new laws — nearly every town has a ban on smoking in public places (because business owners can’t decide for themselves, apparently) and this texting-while-driving ban is almost sure to go through.

Is it necessary, though? Do we need more laws to protect us from our own stupidity?

The whole thing is reminiscent of the “curfew laws,” which became en vogue during the 1990s, and remain in effect in most communities across the nation. We needed a strict curfew, as I understood it, because too many young people were causing trouble at late hours on public streets.

Did we really, though? Perhaps I was fortunate growing up, but I’m almost certain my parents didn’t need the assistance of the police or the mayor to have me home on time — they needed only to tell me where to be and when to be there. Some things, after all, are worse than going to jail.

Which is the great tragedy, after all: we shouldn’t need the government’s help in doing what we should do anyway. But somehow we don’t do the things we should, and so we have to make such laws.

We shouldn’t have needed the government’s help, for example, to stop us from discriminating against our fellow man based on race or religion, but we did. We shouldn’t have needed the government’s help to force us to give to the less fortunate, but somehow it happened anyway.

And we certainly shouldn’t need the government’s help to stop us from destructive behaviors like driving and texting.

But, we’re probably getting it anyway. Happy New Year!