Posted on 05/01/2015 9:24:25 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A Florida woman texted her boyfriend, "Driving drunk woo ... I'll be dead thanks to you," minutes before plowing through a red light and causing a fatal crash, police said.
The driver, Mila Dago, survived the August 2013 crash and is awaiting trial for the death of her friend and passenger Irina Reinoso, 22.
Dago had gone out in Miami that night as she was dealing with breaking up with her boyfriend, according to police records obtained by the Miami Herald last week.
Throughout the night, the then-22-year-old sent her boyfriend 60 bitter texts, including some that seem chilling after the crash, police said.
"I'm done you ruined me … you'll be the death of me," Dago wrote.
Dago sent her final texts while driving a rented Smart Car with Reinoso in the passenger seat, police said.
Three minutes later, she blew through a red light, colliding with a moving pickup truck at 4:44 a.m., police said.
Reinoso was pronounced dead at the scene.
The truck driver, Benjamin Byrum, 51, was knocked unconscious
"The Smart Car is what saved me," Byrum told the Herald. "If it had been anything bigger, I would have been in trouble."
Dago left the crash with bruises. She had more than double the legal blood alcohol content limit for driving two hours after the crash, police said.
She was arrested in January 2014 and put under house arrest after her release from jail on $20,000 bond, NBC Miami reported.
The 24-year-old has pleaded not guilty to DUI manslaughter, vehicular homicide and two counts of DUI with damage to a person.
Her trial date has not yet been set.
"Ms. Dago, who, with her family, prays every day for the young woman who passed and her family, believes it is disrespectful to the young woman's family to publicly comment," her defense attorney, David Rothman, said.
Reinoso’s family has also filed a civil suit against Dago and the mobile rental company Car2Go.
Reinoso was a student at Miami Dade College and hoped to enter law enforcement.
"She was very family oriented, had an incredible heart and always had a smile on her face," her mother, Ivania Reinoso, told the Herald.
Drunk, texting, and in a SmartCar? Suicidal.
There is more than one post on her being drunk. I doubt more fatalities are caused by drunk drivers than texting drivers, but it would not surprise me in the least to hear that texting causes far more accidents of all severities than drunk driving.
I don’t know about that. My theory is that the inherent danger is more related to the way the brain functions during communication tasks than the mechanical/mental tasks of fiddling with the radio, trying to eat a taco while driving, or talking to another person who is physically in the vehicle with you.
This is only my theory derived from simple observation of myself, people I drive with, people talking on phones in other cars, and people talking on a phone anytime, in or out of a car.
The real issue with texting that I see is the mechanical distraction less than the issue I am going to discuss below. When texting, part of the issue is a disembodied communication which is a characteristic it shares with cell phone talkers. But the far bigger problem with texting is that you simply have to take your eyes and mind off the road for extended periods of time.
But talking on the phone while driving seems far more dangerous, and I think there are two factors involved:
1.) Communicating with someone who is not physically present
2.) Using verbal communication
I don’t talk on the phone while driving except under severe necessity (which occasionally happens because I work in a medical IT environment) because I have found that I feel completely and totally unsafe when I do it.
This may be limited to me, or to people who have some kind of cognitive similarity with me, but I find it fascinating, and I know I am not alone in this.
My theory is that talking with someone not physically present involves the use of a different part of the brain than one that is normally used for talking. For me (and I know for a fact from observing other people) that when you have to speak over a phone, walkie-talkie, intercom, or other system used, you change.
I suspect in these examples, there a a specific part of the brain not usually involved in face-to-face communication that is engaged. (DISCLAIMER: WHAT FOLLOWS IS JUST SPECULATION-I DON’T HAVE SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE TO PRESENT THIS AS FACT! WHAT FOLLOWS IS JUST SPECULATION!)
***SPECULATION ON***
For example, when you verbally communicate to someone you are physically with, your brain may use the same three parts parts of the brain all the time (such as the frontal, temporal, and cerebral lobes) which may have well established pathways and can efficiently communicate with each other.
My theory is, that when you have to use verbal communication with someone who is NOT physically present, your brain either has to or is trying to engage a part of your brain such as the parietal lobe or occipital lobe, and it changes the entire equation and the way your brain is handling things at that point.
It is no longer multi-tasking the way it always does, something in the global process changes, and instead of having tasks perform in parallel in your brain (same time...effortlessly, such as walking and chewing gum for MOST people...:) the tasks begin to share resources and have to serial process in some way.
That is, the processing of opinions, decisions, thoughts may normally take place in the frontal lobe and be run through the temporal and cerebrum (or some combination) where the ears send a what came in to the cerebrum, which translates and sends it to the frontal lobe to process and figure out what it means and how to respond, then communicates to the temporal, which creates speech, and transmits to the mouth or something like that. While all of this goes on, the occipital and parietal lobes have no problem, looking at cars on the road, signs, lights, or the person you are speaking with, and everything hums along.
When someone talks on a cell phone, the usual process takes place, but the seamless process is interrupted, I don’t know why, but it seems to me to be related to the fact that the other person is not physically present. It is as if your mind is (under normal conditions of face to face conversation) built in such a way that you unconsciously scan the face of the person you are communicating with for cues, what do they mean, are they angry, sad, do they agree, disagree, look puzzled, whatever. You don’t have to think about taking in cues and processing them to affect your responses, your brain just does it automatically. Furthermore, it not only does this automatically, it knows when you are not looking at them visually, to allow things to process, basically cleanly cutting out the brain’s capacity to absorb and process visual cues so that the communication and cognitive process can proceed with little or no inhibition. Basically, it knows the person is there, but you aren’t looking at them.
It would explain why people can talk just as easily with someone face to face as then can with them in the same car or room when looking out a window, doing surgery, or building a ship model.
But when you are verbally communicating with someone NOT physically present, SOMETHING CHANGES.
It is as if that little sub-routine that says “The person is right next to you. Cut out the visual cues processing for conversation!” does not work, and instead, the brain keeps trying vainly to obtain visual cues from the person, so it keeps trying, and failing. Trying and failing. Trying and failing. All the time taking up brain cycles and open roads between the involved parts of the brain, and inhibiting or slowing things down. As if the traffic cop in your brain has to stop doing what is done naturally, and begins trying to stop traffic, wave that traffic on, figure out who should go next, stop that one, etc. all while some tourist is shouting to you from a stopped car asking where Elm Street is.
In effect, your brain stops acting naturally and efficiently, and begins acting more like a person under pressure in a complex environment, who resorts to linear thinking to try to get thoughts processed and out the door.
***SPECULATION OFF***
And I find it is easy to spot this fundamental issue of talking or verbally communicating with someone who is NOT physically present. All you have to do is look at their face and eyes.
Look at the face of someone standing next to you looking out a window at a bird feeder or traffic on the street. Do you see a blank or searching look as they talk to you? Usually, no. Their face looks normal, and has some kind of “animation”, and their eyes look focused or “normal”.
When you look at the face of someone talking on a cell phone, what do you see? Does it look “normal”? No, it usually has a vague...blank look to it, as if the traffic cop in the brain said “Ok. We have to get things in order. Stop sending facial expressions until we are done here so we can save useful brain cycles.”
But most of all, look at the eyes of someone talking on a cell phone. They look unfocused, distant. Almost as if they have no idea what they should be doing at that time, and they wander. They stare blankly ahead, or focus on a point hanging in space...or they just randomly wander, as if the brain is sending signals all over it’s own structure saying “What should we look at? Do we have anything important coming in? Should we interrupt traffic to let something go through?”
And I have found you can see this look even in an oncoming car or in the rearview mirror of the car in front of you whose driver is talking on the phone. But you can see it just as easily observing people in the same room with you talking on the phone to someone else. It is the visual equivalent of watching someone doodle on a paper as they have a phone conversation with someone. Ever see someone talk on a phone on a corded phone? They stretch the cord, wrap it around things, toy with it, etc. If someone ever exhibited that behavior when you were talking face to face with them, you would think there was something wrong with them.
Once you see it, is is impossible not to notice it. It is kind of like the “Wilhelm Scream” in movies. Once you have heard it, you cannot un-hear it in movies, and you find yourself saying to uncomprehending people as you watch a movie with them: “There it is! Did you hear it? The “Wilhelm Scream”! I heard it!” (you must look it up...:)
Lesson: When you break up with your girlfriend, don’t have her drive you home.
That’s was fascinating. I will reread it to grasp it more but the brain is an amazing organ with limits. Some things evolution did not mean for it to do, nor could it have foreseen such things.
As a rule I have to pull over, I definitely don’t feel safe. The one time I remember talking and thinking “this isn’t a good idea” I was doing about three miles an hour in stuck traffic, and as I began talking, my car drifted slightly to the right, and a guy on a bike went screaming by on my right and I nearly hit him.
I was so mad at both myself and him...
I hate bike riders on the road lol. But in barely moving traffic is the best time to experiment and anyone will soon realize it just is not conducive to driving.
I find talking on the phone while driving not at all distracting, certainly less than talking to a passenger.
In fact, I’m usually listening to a book on CD whenever I’m driving, except in heavy fast traffic. Helps me stay awake.
But for me texting while driving is really, really dangerous.
As you say, I suspect differences in the way our brains process info.
My simple reply is I would not be pissed if Texas passed a law prohibiting cell phone use while driving. The conservative legislature passed a “no texting” bill but Perry vetoed it.
I’ve had several friends die in accidents while texting. Thankfully it only involved their car.
Talking of the phone while driving, I know I’m not as alert. I once drove 15 miles past my exit on the Ohio Turnpike. But at least when someone on the phone is sitting at a red light they more than likely take off once the light turns green. Of course, apparently some of them are waiting on a particular shade of green.
I predict many WON’T survive texting. And I don’t understand “why texting”? Why not dial the person’s number.
I guess they just want to use the phone they just financed. My wife has a $40 phone. Know what it does? It rings. She says “Hello” and there’s someone on the other end who wants to talk to her. If she wants to talk to me she dials a number specifically assigned to me and my cheap phone rings. And we didn’t have to take out a loan to buy either of them.
That was being used successfully here in AZ, so they changed the law so that if you were over the legal limit within some time window, without having ingested any additional alcohol, you are presumed to have been over the limit when the stop was made.
I often have to drive home late at night after a long shift. Calling a friend and talking to them while I drive home helps me stay awake. Like anything else, if talking on the phone distracts you, don’t do it. But don’t take it away from those it might help.
Besides, I routinely drive with a screaming 2 year old in the back seat. I cant think of anything more distracting than that! :)
I was trying to locate a road sign once and the kids were making a lot of noise so I yelled “Will ya’ll be quiet! I can’t see the signs!’ Now that’s a distraction!
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