Whaaat? I can’t hear you. You say Albany wants to ban Izods crossing the street? What do they have against preppy sportswear? Oh – iPods. Why, are they worried we’re all gonna get –

Whoa! Watch where you’re driving buddy! You could have killed somebody! Anyway … you were saying?

Yeah, yeah – it’s funny, right? State Senator Carl Kruger, a Democrat of Brooklyn, is introducing legislation today that would make it a crime to listen to an MP3 player while crossing the street. It would also become a crime to cross while chatting on a cell phone, fiddling with a BlackBerry, or playing a videogame. Groovin’ while movin’ would be punishable by a $100 fine — and, if possible, a tongue-lashing from me.

What kind of crazy person plays a videogame while crossing the street?

Sure, this proposal smacks of nanny-statism. Sure, it does come from the same guy who proposed bills to require full-size spare tires in rental vehicles, safety belts on school buses — which, while he’s at it, should also be required to fit someone who’s not the size of a boiler — and the annual inspection of manholes (but, strangely, not the actual filling of those holes). He has also proposed legislation to require companies to disclose the amount of sodium in their foods, to require that all new teachers learn the Heimlich maneuver — and CPR, of course — and a bill that would suspend a guy’s driver’s license if he’s convicted of boating while intoxicated, and vice versa. Not to mention a bill to require the Transit Authority to provide Zithromax for any commuter seated next to a passenger with a runny nose.

Well, that last one I made up, but the others are real. So, clearly, Mr. Kruger is a safety junkie who never met a danger he didn’t obsess about, magnify, and set out to vanquish through surprising, sometimes first-in-the-nation, legislation — as this iPod law would be.

So, it’s easy to poke fun.

On the other hand, as a mother who would like to see a helmet law for children — not the one already on the books for when they’re biking, I mean one that requires helmets all the time (bricks fall, children trip) — I can understand where the senator is coming from. And there is something noble about allowing yourself to become a statewide laughingstock in the process of trying to save some lives.

“I was prompted by the fatalities that occurred,” Mr. Kruger said during a cell phone conversation from the freeway.

A cell phone call on the freeway?

“I’m being driven,” he hastened to add.

Since September, he said, there have been four MP3-related pedestrian deaths in the city, and they “were sort of a wake-up call to an issue that was going unaddressed.”

Just as a 2001 law banned holding a phone while driving (a great law), his iPod proposal — which would apply only in large cities — would force people, however resentfully, to pay a certain amount of attention to their surroundings.

Put that way, it sounds no nuttier than forcing drivers to get a vision check before they can get a license. The notion is: If you can’t see well, you can’t drive well. In truth, if you can’t hear well, you can’t cross the street that well, either. You’re out of it. Drivers are required to correct their vision. Pedestrians should be required to correct their hearing.

The problem is that most people feel they are paying plenty of attention already and are unwilling to give up one second of the soundtrack that flows through their lives.

“I can’t not listen to my iPod,” high school senior Elizabeth Kim said over the Korean music in her ears as she crossed Main Street in Flushing.

“Are they going to give me my money back?” asked Brooklyn freelancer Thomas Art, who was listening to Run-D.M.C. while crossing a busy street in Midtown.

One pedestrian, however, actually had his listening device off as he did his crossing. Carmelo Cortes, a 26-year-old from the Bronx, said he was of two minds about the bill. “It’s kind of stupid, kind of not,” he said.

Exactly. It’s stupid to think this law would ever work. “You there, bopping. Halt!” But it’s kind of not stupid to think that there is something dangerous about having millions of pedestrians newly disengaged from reality.

So, how about a deal? Drivers start paying serious attention to pedestrians and pedestrians pay serious attention to drivers, almost as if real lives were at stake.

Talk about an idea that’ll never work.