Someone employed as a trolly conductor in Boston recently caused a major trolley accident while texting. Automatic prison time should be given.
This is one of my HUGEST pet peeves. Well, actually, what I refer to as "distracted driving", which includes everything from putting on makeup, shaving, reading the newspaper, you name it.
I grew up in Oregon, a state that takes its driving and rules of the road very seriously. And, if I do say so myself, [rainman] I'm and excellent driver. [/rainman]
Then I moved to Boston, which is pretty universally known as having some of the "worst", most aggressive drivers in the country. And I sort of had to re-learn how to drive, incorporating my basic driving skills, with ultra-defensive skills just to stay alive on may daily commute.
I drive a mere 15 miles to work each way every day of the week, including about half of that on a major interstate highway. And every single day I see people reading the newspaper on their steeringwheel, typing on their laptops, men using electric razors, tons of people talking on the phone and texting, and many of them "multitasking" by doing more than one of these things at the same time while driving at least 75 miles per hour in heavy traffic. There is one woman who I used to see regularly on my commute who would be driving, talking on her cell phone which she had cradled between her ear and shoulder, smoking a cigarette and/or drinking coffee and/or putting on mascara while driving ...
every time I saw her!!! On one particularly eggregious day I actually called the police because she was weaving all over the highway and I had seen her nearly cause 2 accidents. The response was essentially, "yeah, so?"
It's a miracle to me that there aren't
more accidents and fatalities from this.
In the past 5 years alone, there have been several severe reported accidents (including many fatalities) on the road and rail due to people texting while driving, including the recent incident mentioned above.
We have had bills before our state legislature several times over the past few years to outlaw this kind of behavior, yet we were never able to get it passed (despite huge public outcry and letter writing campaigns by people like me). There are just too many people who don't want their "toys" taken away or their "personal freedoms infringed upon." It makes me crazy!!!
To paraphrase a line of SCOTUS decisions, a person's individual liberties may be limited to the extent that those liberties are likely to result in injury or death to others. There are studies showing that "distracted driving" is more prevalent than driving under the influence and more likely to result in injury, yet we in this state can't seem to find the wherewithall to regulate it.
Huff-huff-huff-puff-puff-puff.
Sorry, this one gets me pretty worked up. Which is saying something, because (for those of you who don't know me) I'm a pretty even-keeled guy and hard to "ruffle".
This has always been an issue for me, but became even more important after I was in a near head-on collission recently. The other driver heading in the opposite direction hit black ice and spun into my lane, which isn't necessarily her fault, I understand. However, one of the people who stopped after the accident to help told me that she had just passed him at an excessive speed and that he had seen her with her head bent sideways cradling a cell phone between her ear and shoulder. I can't help wondering if we could have avoided the accident if she'd been paying closer attention to her driving and less to her phone conversation.
To those of you whose states (and/or countries) have laws regulating this, good on ya! I'm going to keep pushing for it here and hope I don't get killed by someone texting and driving before that happens.
Thanks for raising this topic. I think it needs to be kept in the forefront of peoples' conciousness to help get something done about it.
*steps off of soapbox*
