Posted on 02/25/2007 8:36:32 AM PST by jazusamo
I still have a very old analog cell phone. I take it with me when I go for a bicycle ride so if I break down or get a flat I can call GF to come get me. Other than that it's never even turned on. I think I've made two calls in maybe 3 years since GF insisted I take it with me when I go for a ride.
At home my number has always been unlisted and I fill out all the forms that cross my path with a BS number. I can probally count the number of people etc that actualy have my number. Guess what..I NEVER get marketing calls etc.
We say you HAVE to wear a seat belt because it saves lives, when often the only life involved is your own. So, another way you don't have to decide on your own to be responsible, even to yourself, you simply have to decide to not think for yourself, but to just go along so you won't get a ticket.
The same is true with the cell-phone while driving issue. We don't ask you to be a self-actuating-responsibility entity. Just do what we say, blindly and quit thinking for yourself and discerning your own optimum "safe" limits. Don't think about how to be responsible for your own actions. Just be a sheeple, a non-thinking entity, a rule follower, and we won't arrest you.
The more rules by which you can arrest people, the less responsible they will become for their own actions. Generation by generation you will have to create more and more rules for the people, because you have increasingly taught them not to think, but to follow rules.
Why be nice?
Drivers who are yakking on the phone while driving are jerks with an exaggerated sense of self, and a totally ignorant opinion of their ability to multitask.
The test described in this article is illuminating, but only partially explains the dangers in yakking while driving.
I believe that eventually the load on the brain, both the thinking and perception/coordination parts are severely compromised by this particular form of multi-tasking. The dangers to those around them is real and potentially deadly.
I experienced these doofuses for 8 years, commuting on California I-5, and I could identify the losers before getting alongside them, simply through their erratic driving. Every time.
I see the requirement in the future in the case of every accident involving serious damage, injury and death, that a cell phone search will be a normal part of the investigation, and criminal negligence be the result. When a few of these &#^$*@)@&#$( lose their home or SUV for damages, maybe they will start taking the problem seriously.
Yes, I believe that 90% of these losers will deny having been using their cell phones when the accident occured. That type of personality are also habitual liars.
Better yet, standing on the side of the road, thumb out, cell phone to ear.
Perhaps not, but when the results of that stupidity are a tragedy for others, and it is preventable, it is simple justice for laws to make it very very costly to the genetically stupid.
And neither have most people who think there is not a problem with their aiming-while-yakking...
I hope that was intended as a "cute" and not serious argument.
There is no one other than mom and baby endagered in that process, certainly not 3000 pounds of steel, aluminum and plastic hurtling at 80 miles per hour... a common occurence on Interstate 5.
That was not a dig, was supposed to be funny. My apologies that it came across wrong.
I do yack on the phone while driving my Vette. However it is a bluetooth hands free. I have yet to miss an exit. LOL!
You make many good points as does Reinhard in his article.
I was born, raised and lived over 40 years in So CA. I-10, 210 & 605 were were a mess when we left years ago, I can't imagine what they're like now.
Back then there was no such thing as a cell phone but people occupied their free time in commuter traffic by reading the paper, doing crosswords and putting makeup on, I guess they talk to all their friends now. :-)
And many of them are cops in uniform, while driving a patrol car.
Guess I am one of those genetically stupid people.
Not necessarily quick; and that poses additional burdens on everyone. The delusional are usually clever as well as stupid (not necessarily mutually exclusive): throwaway cell phones; using someone else's who has an alibi, dumping the phone after an accident and claiming it lost or stolen... lots of ways to evade responsibility.
And then there's the new accident investigation task of determining that there was a cell phone at the site of all serious or fatal accidents.
I wouldn't dismiss this so lightly. Is a head on collision serious enough for you? Nearly happened to me -- the driver was apparently getting directions from someone over the phone while simultaneously attempting to locate an address. How about chatty people encroaching into your lane while doing 70 mph? What about young, inexperienced drivers rushing home from school yacking away with friends they just saw 10 minutes ago and totally distracted from anything around them?
Point is, there are some potentially serious situations involving vehicluar use of cell phones. I understand that we can never eliminate risk in our daily lives and wouldn't suggest totally banning cell phones while driving, but would consider age restrictions on using cell phones while driving (e.g., 16-19) and perhaps even some type of speed restrictions given the shorter reaction times when driving at high speeds.
This isn't the only study to reach the same conclusion.
Additionally, I believe we're each aware of times we've screwed up while driving and talking on the cell phone.
Between my own mistakes, mistakes by otherwise good drivers while I was a passenger, and observed screwups by cell phone impaired drivers, I don't need any more evidence.
You never missed an exit in your whole life?
Not even before cell phones?
How long you been driving?
Why?
Have you killed anyone while yakking and driving?
I never suggested you were among them, and I never claimed that no one can handle the task; I do believe, thought, that 80% of the drivers on the road are aimers, not drivers, and that was true before cell phones.
They have no concept of reaction times, kinetic energy, defensive driving or weather conditions. I've been tailgated doing 80 mph...
We really, REALLY need a law like this in CA. Some guy was talking on the phone when he sideswiped my company's truck in his new Mercedes twice at the worst freeway intersection you can find - 405 south to 101 west. The wheel bolts just rippied the side of that car up. And the stupid ass was still on the phone when the Highway Patrol was trying to talk to him. He got 2 tickets.
Dig up Jimmy Buffett's 'I-95 song'. It goes like this: "Were you born an asshole, or did you work at it your whole life..." LOL
You have to see the 10-lane 405 between Santa Clarita and the Sepulveda pass. A big chicken truck ended on it's side once and chickens were running all over the place. The same with a bunch of pigs. When the double-trailor beer truck overturned, people got out and cleaned up the mess fairly quickly!
Yes, I know, this is something of an intrusion on personal liberty. "Something of" because driving is a privilege, not a right.
I'm not sure what idiot started the "driving is a privilege" nonsense, but the statement is a complete lie. The Founding Fathers authorized the government to build "post roads" to assist in delivering the mail. In the Federalist papers, they talk about the benefit of these post roads in encouraging commerce in addition to allowing the postal service to deliver the mail. Our Founding Fathers fully recognized that the government would build roads and that everyone had a right to use those roads to carry on commerce; to go to the store to buy stuff; to go to the movies, which is another form of commerce; to go to work; etc.. Did they ever envision that walking on these post roads was a right but that riding a horse or drawing a carriage was a privilege that could be extended only to the privileged few? There's nothing to suggest that the Founding Fathers would have agreed to this stupid idea. Driving is a right. Like any other right, there may be legitimate limits on how we use it. Just as the government may limit our First Amendment rights by not allowing us to shout political speeches in residential neighborhoods at three o'clock in the morning, the government may regulate speed limits and traffic signals. Just as a person who shouts political speeches in a residential neighborhood at three in the morning can lose his right to move freely in society, someone who drives 70 mph hour through a school zone can lose his right to drive. However, what's being lost is a right to drive and not a privilege.
We had bad drivers long before we had cell phones. Some people will go through life failing to pay attention to what they are doing. If they aren't talking on a cell phone while driving, they'll do something else equally distracting. The problem isn't the cell phone. The problem is the lack of responsibility in people who won't carefully assess their situation and make whatever changes are necessary to make themselves safe. We can spend forever trying to regulate this or that supposed distraction, but we aren't addressing the real problem.
I don't really believe most of these studies that claim that cell phones are all that distracting. I suspect that most of them are staged in a way to produce results that were decided in advance. I also suspect that the distraction of a cell phone is nothing compared to the distraction of having one's children demand attention for one reason or another. However, I don't see these same people demanding that everyone driving with children in the car have another responsible adult in the car to deal with the children so that the driver isn't distracted.
While there are many situations where using a cell phone while driving makes driving less safe, there are also situations where using a cell phone makes driving safer. One of the most dangerous times for me is when I'm trying to find a place where I've never been. During that time, I'm trying to read street signs that I'd normally ignore. I'm slowing for reasons that wouldn't be apparent to other drivers as I look for signs and landmarks. I've noticed the same behaviors in other drivers as well. If I'm on a cell phone with someone giving me directions, I'm safer, but I doubt that legislators will write this kind of exception into the law. Another time when cell phones can make driving safer is when someone is driving long stretches of interstate alone, particularly at times when traffic is light. Most of us have been lulled quite a bit during those times, and we have to find ways to keep alert. Talking to someone on a cell phone during those times would help.
Another factor is that using cell phones while driving allows some people to save hours of time during every week of their lives. Salesmen and some service providers in particular make good use of their cell phones in this way. If they are saving five hours a week because they can make contacts and hold conversations while driving, what will they sacrifice to make up those five hours if driving and talking is banned? Will they just give up two of their children's baseball games every week to make up that time? Will they give up an exercise routine because they just don't have time? For many people, five hours is about the equivalent of one night's sleep. When people must make these sacrifices, what does the cell phone ban really give us? For most people, giving up significant time with family or friends reduces the quality of life significantly. We might increase the quantity of life, but we are certainly decreasing the quality. If someone has to give up an exercise program in order to make up time that used to be saved by conducting some business while driving, then quality of life and quantity of life may both decrease.
When someone must give up sleep in order to take care of business, we end up with more sleepy drivers on the road. They may be less distracted by their cell phones, but they are also operating on lower level of alertness already. The net gain is zero. Furthermore, they can't call someone to talk them home when they are sleepy.
I knew a good man who died in a car accident a few years ago. He was a busy man who was coming home from a business dinner. He fell asleep at the wheel and drove over the median about a mile or two before his exit. If he'd stayed awake ten minutes longer, he'd have fallen asleep in a recliner in his home instead. When he crashed, he also killed a driver in another car. He didn't know when he left the business dinner that he was so tired. If he'd gotten on the cell phone, maybe someone could have talked him home. If he'd sounded bad enough, maybe someone would have insisted that he just pull over and let someone come to get him.
Are we losing people to drivers who use cell phones when driving? Yes, I'm sure we are. Would many of those accidents have happened anyway because the drivers who caused them would have found something else to distract them if they hadn't had cell phones? Yes, we would have even if the anti-cell phone whiners won't admit it. Will banning the use of cell phones while driving bring its own set of costs that are not insignificant? Yes, the costs of this kind of nanny-statism are higher than the benefits.
Bill
I'm the go-to guy for my aged parents' caregivers and have to be contactable at all times, dammit!
This is one of the few things where I disagree with El Rushbo. Public streets and hiways are just that - public. I think the author makes a good case. The first day I had my little Triumph Spitfire on the road after a 2-year restoration, I took it to work. After work, I was sitting at the intersection of Uptown and Louisiana (Albuquerque) waiting for an opening so I could turn right on Louisiana. I saw the pickup truck coming at me from behind and could see the 20-something girl chatting on her cell phone, completely oblivious to the fact that she was about to hit me. There was noting I could do but mash my break in hopes of not being pushed out into oncoming traffic. BAM!! $1100 in damage. Fortunately she had insurance. Even more fortunate, my quick mashing of the brake kept me from going “too far” out into traffic on busy Louisiana.
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