Can you hear me now?

No one should have to endure the nightmare Barbara Langer experienced on the Northway, shouted angry legislators and editorial pages across the state this week. Cellular service along a barren stretch of road in the otherwise pristine Adirondack Park would have saved Langer's husband, Alfred, who succumbed to hypothermia 19 hours after the couple's car sailed off the highway and into an obscure swath of woods in rural Essex County.

Using words like 'outrageous' and 'incomprehensible,' these righteous lawmakers and editorialists brutally castigated everything from the chiseler service providers for being too cheep to install cell towers along the swath of forest to the environmentalist for rallying against 100-foot cell towers being built in New York's largest park.

But as tragic as this accident was, Alfred Langer's ultimate demise could have been thwarted by something a lot simpler and less costly than a 70-mile row cell phone towers. Were the Langers to employ even an ounce of common sense, chances are pretty good they both would have escaped their ordeal with at least their lives.

At one point in the not-so-distant past --before the advent of cell phones and GPS systems --motorists prepared themselves for long trips. Some may even remember outfitting their cars with blankets, flares and even fire extinguishers before going on long journeys. These were staple items that could be stowed easily in any car and could come in handy at an accident scene, regardless of the circumstances.

Another simple tact motorists once used was a few calls on the good ol' land line. Call someone before you leave, tell them when you're going to arrive and then call someone when you finally get there. Then, if you don't arrive at your destination, someone can dispatch help or at least sound the alarm. Before the massive proliferation of cell phones, mothers across the nation routinely employed this technique to ensure their progeny wasn't bleeding off to the side of the road; after all, it's a common sense move.

But now, with automobiles safer than ever and with the conveniences of everything from roadside assistance to robust state police patrols, many drivers forget how perilous it is to traverse the highway. This is especially the case when it comes to barreling through nearly a hundred miles of desolate mountain terrain, where help will take a while to come even if they know where an accident is.

In Albany, the answer to this tragedy is more legislation. Make sure there's cell service on the Northway, because that will save lives --just like the call-boxes located at every quarter mile along the way. Then in a few years, when an accident victim dies because their cell battery expired, these same legislators can mandate that all automobiles be outfitted with OnStar systems. Maybe in a few decades, they can commission a 30-foot rubber wall running the length of I-87 so that no motorist will ever unexpectedly leave the highway.

The bottom line is you can't legislate common sense. And common sense is what saves lives, not cell phones, not cell towers and certainly not legislators.