Rock Concert 2016
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 ...
Sounds like a self-correcting problem. For the most part.
I don’t even own a cell phone....LOL....
Yeah? How many people are killed and injured for other reasons?
If innocent people are dying as a result, how exactly is it a self-correcting problem in any way?
I retired as a senior engineer from a HUGE world wide company.
Before I retired, one of the vice presidents and my immediate manager were in my office when the VP’s cell phone rang...he looked and said he didn’t need to take the call...I told him I didn’t own a cell phone...
He looked at me funny and asked why??
I pointed at my boss and then at him and said, “So him and you can’t call me...”
He thought for a second and then said, “You are the smartest man I know...”
I am proud to say I have never taken a “selfie” even before the word was coined.
I don’t IM/Text and I *NEVER* talk on the phone while driving. I prefer email when I can get to it when I get to it.
I don’t FB (I have an account to look at my family’s pages but never post), I don’t twitter, snapchat or any of that stuff. I frequently forget my PDA at home and don’t even notice, except if I want to look up a price for something to get it cheaper at Best Buy.
You would think people would know: Keep as SMALL a interwebz footprint as humanly possible. No one needs to know you did a #2 at the Starbucks restaurant just now. But criminals will be happy to know you are in Cancun partying it up. Other criminals will be happy for the 2 out of 3 pieces of info they need to steal your identity (name and birthdate).
Summary: people are stupid and vain. Young people are REALLY stupid and REALLY vain.
Rock Concert 2016
Sounds like we need Moms Against Cell Phones to take up arms. Oh, wait. What about sipping a cola while driving? Burger? Changing radio stations? Lighting a cigar? Turning around to get the kids to settle down? Looks like driverless cars may be the answer. Then when Big Bro doesn’t want you going someplace, BOOM! Car no move. Hoofin’ it I guess.
No great loss. Perhaps it's natural selection, reborn.
I got my first a few months ago
I gave myself some wiggle room.
Neither do I.
I keep track of the number of times I have said to myself, "Gee, I really wish I had a cell phone right now." In 2015, the number was 5. So far in 2016, the number is 2.
>>Yeah? How many people are killed and injured for other reasons?<<
It doesn’t matter.
>>Sounds like a self-correcting problem. For the most part.
Not really. Not even close. Every year, cell phones and social media find new ways to integrate themselves into people’s lives. A couple of deaths a day (and the dead person is often NOT the cell phone abuser) do not come close to countering this trend.
There are people who think that the world needs to just stay out of their way when they need to use a cell phone and the number is growing and it expanding outside of the young adult demographic.
The funny part is that the worst cell phone abusers are people who will lecture you endlessly on “social responsibility” as long as you are talking about global warming, saving the whales, or ending poverty. But, question them about their responsibility to the person right next to you when they are texting and driving or walking into them in the mall and they go crazy. Apparently “social responsibility” does not count if you can make physical contact with the person who is asking you to be responsible.
Of course not. Perspective is the enemy of cherry picking.
If I knew how to post the Donald Sutherland picture in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers I would.
/s
What if you aren’t one of those who texts and drives but you are struck by one who texts and drives?
Is that self-correcting?
If a moron walks onto a busy street because he or she is on her cell phone and doesn't realize he or she is walking onto a busy street and another moron is in his or her car and does not see the moron crossing the street, the moron crossing the street will no longer use his or her cell phone while walking because he or she will be dead and the moron in the car will no longer drive while on his or her cell phone because he or she will be in prison.
Whew.
The lengths some of you people make me go to.
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