Woman killed in text messaging accident

KTAR.com ^ | 12/27/2009 | Elizabeth Shell

[Saije]

Vinnie Sorce knew something was wrong when he saw a police officer pull into the driveway. He immediately sent his three children, two boys from a previous marriage and a little girl with his fiancee, to their rooms so he could talk to the officer outside.

"Time just froze," he said.

Sorce's fiancee, Stacey Stubbs, had headed to Phoenix for a doctor's appointment.

She never made it.

A Ford pickup truck hit Stubbs' rented PT Cruiser head-on on an isolated stretch of road near Lake Pleasant, killing her instantly. The other driver, Ashley Miller, 19, was thrown from the truck and later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Sorce later went to the hospital to identify Stubbs' body.

"You could see her nose was broken, and her fingers were all crushed, like she had gripped the wheel," Sorce said.

A familiar pain flooded back. Sorce had lost his first wife, Lisa, to cancer eight years before.

"The hardest thing I thought I'd ever have to do was tell the boys their mom had died," he said. "All of a sudden I had to do it again."

A few days later he was enraged to hear that Miller had been text messaging on her cell phone. Based on a message Miller sent a minute before the 911 call reporting the accident, police surmised that she became distracted and crossed the center line.

Crashes blamed on cell phone use and text messaging as well as recent studies outlining the dangers of the practice have helped build interest around the country in restrictions.

As of late 2009, six states - California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Washington - and Washington, D.C., required drivers to use a hands-free device, and 19 states and Washington, D.C., prohibited text messaging behind the wheel.

[arthurus]

My favorite scene is a group of young folks, probably a dozen and a half visiting the beach here and walking in a group. Every one of them had a cell phone stuck his ear. All were involved in animated electric conversation and oblivious to the people they were vixiting the beach with, unless they were talking to each other and just did not know how to do that without the cell phones.
I had a Net-10 cell once for one use in order to meet someone in a huge airport with only a few minutes time. I subsequently gave away the phone and the remaining minutes. When I am out of touch I want to be out of touch.

[Little Ray]

That’s probably more important since more women initiate divorce proceedings than men...

[fatnotlazy]

I caught all sorts of heck over my statements. Glad you seem to agree with me.

There is really nothing that anyone needs to tell me, or I need to tell anyone else that can’t wait until I get home or to some other land line phone. When I worked, I was on the phone much of the day, five days a week. When I left work, I really didn’t want to talk to anyone, by phone or even in person.

The one thing that bothers me is that pay phones are becoming scarce. The assumption is that everyone has a cell phone. Well, I don’t, and I resent the effort to force me to get one.