Posted on 06/19/2016 6:40:54 AM PDT by upchuck
We are, it seems, long past the moment where there’s nothing worth doing unless we’re on the phone — photographing it, uploading it, texting it, tweeting it.
And it’s killing us...
In 2009, Deborah Matis-Engle was sentenced to six years in prison for texting while driving — more specifically, she was paying bills online — and smashing into another vehicle, which burst into flames and killed the driver inside.
Just months after the crash, while awaiting trial, California Highway Patrol spotted Matis-Engle texting while driving on two separate occasions.
“This collision had absolutely no impact on her,” the prosecutor said...
According to the CDC, over 8 people are killed and 1,161 are injured each day in the US by distracted driving. Texting while driving is now the leading cause of teenage deaths in this country. Anecdotally, emergency rooms are seeing an uptick of injuries to “petextrians” — people who text while walking and have, say: run into a 300-pound bear (California, 2012), fallen into a fountain at the mall (Pennsylvania, 2011), or fallen on to train tracks (Pennsylvania, 2012)...
According to a 2012 Time magazine study, 84 percent of people around the world said they couldn’t go a single day without their cellphones. Clearly, they mean it...
Collectively, Americans check their phones 8 billion times a day. For the average person, that shakes out to 46 times a day. A July 2015 Gallup poll found that 41 percent of Americans check their phones a few times an hour. A Baylor University study found that the average female college student spends ten hours per day on the phone.
“That’s astounding,” said Baylor’s lead researcher James Roberts, Ph.D. “As cellphone functions increase, addictions to this seemingly indispensable piece of technology becomes an increasingly realistic possibility.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
That’s Hubby. I told him he needed a new phone so he could text and he said no. Bought him an iPad, which he loves, but he won’t set up iMessage on it. lol
Cell phones are killing us the same way guns are killing us - individual acts of stupidity/maliciousness ....
Grrrr!
That is priceless.... Tell us more about your book or freepmail me... I was crazy about Newt and Forstchen’s “One Second After.”
When we retired and moved from CA to GA, we sold my 1978 Chevy Malibu - completely restored beautifully - and how I wished later we had made arrangements to bring it with us. It would start in case of EMP I’m told but what to do about pumping gas? Out of luck, I guess! Oh! Well! Such are the decisions we make and live with!
;-).
Buy a cellphone for someone you hate ?
“”I don’t know much about “old folks” yet...I’m only 67 years old...””
It creeps up fast so don’t waste a second of it!!! I can’t remember being 67...We didn’t retire until age 70 and if we hadn’t wanted to be with our daughter in GA, we probably wouldn’t have retired then EXCEPT for the fact, WHO could afford to retire in CA?
It IS different than talking on the phone. I can drink a milkshake or eat a candy bar while driving a car, and not feel impaired in the least.
But, to paraphrase Chris Rock in this video How Not To Get Your Ass Kicked by The Police, if you are driving down the road, eating a Taco Bell taco, spilling it on your lap, and trying to keep yourself clean, maybe you SHOULD snuff yourself out in a car accident...
The reason I think there is something to the concept your brain processes interaction differently when the other person isn't there, I think back to watching people carrying on a phone conversation on a land line. Ever watch that? People doodling, drawing, fiddling with stuff, while their disembodied eyes look the corners in the ceiling as they wrap the phone cord around themselves. You ever see someone do stuff like that while they talk with someone in the same room with them? If you have, it is pretty rare.
Now, put that same person in a car talking on the phone, doing 40 mph with traffic entering and exiting, pedestrians, people on bikes, etc. I really don't think the analogy is to people eating or talking to someone sitting next to them.
I don’t own one either, back in the day they tried to make me carry a pager. I just left in the office desk draw every night when I went home for work.
As a matter of fact, our cell-plan allows for 500 minutes of cellphone use, and we get nights and weekend free, and we still have never even approached 150 minutes for ALL usage during one month. My portion of the usage has always been between 0 and 20 minutes ... my wife has more friends than I do. People in my office know not to call my cellphone after work hours, but to call my landline, which has an answering machine. When I come home from work, my cellphone goes on the charger with the ringer turned off, and doesn't get looked at again until the next morning when I turn it back on and put it in my pocket.
It's an emergency phone only.
I wish. I work in medicine, and have been carrying a pager non-stop for 30 years.
I hate pagers with a white-hot burning passion, and the sound of one makes me jump. If I hear it while sleeping (I have mine next to my bed) I levitate out of the bed, and sweating with pounding heart, grapple around to stop the thing.
I HATE PAGERS. But I have to wear one.
I’m happy you “escaped” from California...LOL...
I spent 16 weeks in California in the military and that was about 17 weeks too long...:o))
The lack of gas is not an issue in an immediate issue with an EMP.
If you assume that 90% of vehicles would stop workingin a worst case scenario, then you have plenty of gasoline for months for the vehicles which do work. A mathematical example:
A town of 5,000 people where there are 5,200 working vehicles would lose use of 4,680 vehicles in a worst case scenario. If the average fuel tank for those vehicles is 20 gallons, and the average tank is at 40% capacity, that would mean that the people of the town would have access to 37,400 gallons of gasoline for the 520 working vehicles.
Or (at an average 20 gallon tank) about 3 1/2 fill ups per working vehicle.
With proper rationing and judicious use of vehicles, you would have months of gasoline available.
Wife and I were sitting at a light this morning. The person on our left was the first up in the left turn lane. She was staring down into her lap. Left arrow turned green. It took two horn toots from the car behind her to get her attention. Not quick toots either. She finally raised her head, saw the green light, and pulled off from the light.
I’m not saying she was texting, but...she was texting.
Watch any baseball game on TV and you’ll see 80% of the people in the stands busy on their phones.
I don’t even bring mine to the game, and I made sure my son doesn’t either.
Only a moron would type a message to somebody on a device that you can actually TALK to the same person on.
BAN TEXTING AND MUSLIMS!!!!!
One bad thing about cell phones is not knowing anyone’s phone numbers. If your phone is dead or you forget your phone and need to call someone, you’re screwed. At least I am.
About 38,300 traffic deaths in 2015. 2,920 (8 per day) 7.6% of 38,300. Of course, those 8 per day include non-traffic deaths, which are far greater than traffic deaths.
Pre-cellphones I checked the stats at insurance companies. Well over half of traffic deaths were alcohol related. Also over half of deaths from swimming, boating, RV, snowmobile, hunting, fishing, domestic violence and gun deaths are alcohol related.
Cellphone deaths could be compared to those who read a newspaper while driving, or while walking accross the street. They are the problem. But not the big problem.
Alcohol is the big problem. If alcohol had not been involve, people in the nightclub could have carried weapons in self-defense.
That doesn’t make sense. You can’t light a joint with a cellphone.
Or is there an app for that?
It’s true that you can end up wasting lots of time at work with your phone. Texting, internet, etc. I try to keep my phone use to a minimum at work and limit it to lunch time. Sometimes people just want to contact me. Job interviews, stop off and get milk, making appointments...kind of stuff.
>>The lengths some of you people make me go to.
I see what you mean. We ended drunk driving the same way. I’m glad that problem no longer exists.
Of course, its easy to prove if the driver was drunk or stoned. Not so easy to prove that they were DUI of a cell phone unless laws are passed forbidding their use while driving. But, the libertarians will quickly jump on that as an infringement of some right.
I was rear-ended by a person texting. Car was “almost” totalled, so they “fixed” and it was never right again. Sold it at a loss because the Carfax showed a $10,000 repair. My neck was injured, but symptoms didn’t show until 4 years later. I saw the person coming at me but was boxed in by cars and couldn’t do anything but brace for impact. I saw her clear as day in my mirror with that cell phone perched high on the steering wheel in front of her. Cop elected to not charge her since no one was injured (at the time).
So, what was the self-correcting part of that case?
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