Car Phone

Drunken drivers now have a new enemy in their midst: their fellow motorists. Anyone in an automobile that has a car phone can hit "#77" and report inebriated drivers to the Maryland State Police. BMWs and Buicks are thus being turned into patrol cars.For the next six months, the State Police will use the #77 hotline along Interstate 95. If results are positive, the system will be expanded. In 15 states that have similar hotlines, there have been sharp increases in the number of drunk driving arrests.

Howard County Council members wielded their budget knives on themselves yesterday by imposing spending ceilings on car phone use, convention attendance and the amount they can pay their assistants.Next week, they begin looking to control similar costs in the rest of county government as they take up this year's budget proposal from County Executive Charles I. Ecker.The Republican county executive, who pretty much had his way with budget cuts when Democrats controlled the council, may find the GOP-dominated council eager to cut even more.

Harford County Executive Eileen M. Rehrmann says she couldn't have wrapped up negotiations to convince Frito-Lay Inc. to build a plant inthe county without her cellular car phone."

Last-minute bombshells are a staple of campaign politics. Democrat Kathryn A. Mann got off a series of allegations against Howard County Council Chairman C. Vernon Gray days before tomorrow's primary. In her bid to unseat Mr. Gray for the District 4 council seat, Ms. Mann accused the incumbent of illegally using bulk mail permits to distribute campaign literature, of excessively using his county government car phone and for not attending community meetings in his East Columbia district.It was enough to put Mr. Gray very much on the defensive on the eve of the election, which is exactly the point.

ANY POLITICAL POINTS that Howard County Council Chairman Charles C. Feaga hoped to score recently against Democratic council member C. Vernon Gray for excessive car phone use backfired. Not only did Mr. Feaga retreat from his demand that Mr. Gray reveal his cellular telephone records, he came in for denunciation himself as a do-little leader of the council.Among the critics, naturally, was Mr. Gray, who has grown more than a little weary of Mr. Feaga's continued harping on his use of the cellular phones council members are issued as part of their work with the county.

If you were driving north on the Jones Falls Expressway and spotted a man walking south along the shoulder, would you find it odd? Would you care? Would you pull over and ask if he needed help? If you had a cellular phone, would you report him to police?My answers to those questions are no, not too much, probably not and maybe. I've seen young men walking along highways and, unless they appeared to be in distress, I never gave them a second thought.Two years ago, while traveling through New York state, I passed a man and woman holding a baby (with no vehicle in sight)

ANNAPOLIS -- Do you get steamed when a guy yakking on his car phone veers into your lane and cuts you off?Does your blood pressure rise when a punk rocker parks in front of your house and turns up his 1,000-watt radio to blast-furnace level -- playing the Dead Milkmen?Ladies: Do you ever spend anxious minutes in line to use one of two toilets in a public restroom while men breeze in and out of their better-equipped bathroom?Do you ever mutter between clenched teeth, "THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW AGAINST THAT!"

ANNAPOLIS -- Del. Carolyn J. B. Howard was outraged when she got a letter from her cellular phone company that said her "unlimited time" would be limited and her "prime-time" hours would be trimmed. This happened three weeks after the Prince George's County Democrat signed up for a car phone.Del. Leslie Hutchinson, D-Baltimore County, is incensed that her cellular company doesn't itemize charges on her monthly account. "To even dispute your bill is impossible," she said.And Del. K. Bennett Bozman, D-Worcester County, is upset that his constituents in Worcester County have no choices when it comes to cellular service: Only one company reaches the Eastern Shore, or Western Maryland, for that matter.

An eastern Baltimore County man pleaded guilty yesterday to stealing his estranged wife's car and setting it on fire with the intention of ramming it through his mother-in-law's living room where his wife was staying.However, Michael Wayne Heim, 26, of Victory Villa Gardens was stopped short after he apparently set the fire inside the car too soon and lost control when the flames got out of hand and the car struck an exposed sewer pipe in the front yard of a house several blocks from his intended mark.