People are not going to stop using their mobile devices while driving. They think their driving skills are good enough to avoid an accident. These same people are always the most aggressive as well. In fact, they are the worse drivers on the road. A few commenters referred to us as hi hatters, pompous, pious. I’m none of those. What I am, is the husband of a Police Lieutenant who has heard a lot stories over the years about traffic fatalities. I don’t give a damn if you hurt your self in traffic. I just don’t want your ignorance getting me hurt.
lol…I learned to text about a year ago. I was quite proud of myself. about the 2nd or 3rd day I texted my significant other, “hey! I can text and ride my bike at the same time!” …well, I tried to text her that anyway. I fell off my bicycle halfway thru. I had been riding a bike for close to 40 yrs and am quite skilled at it. I have texted while driving also, but no longer do. it is way too dangerous.
in high school I worked on the painting crew for Perdue Farms for a summer. we used to see him, Frank Perdue that is, driving his silver Mercedes with a news paper on the steering wheel. everyone knew to be on their toes when he got behind the wheel. he was famous for his accidents as well as his chickens. he did walk faster than anyone else tho and I did always try to emulate that.
Apparently people can’t walk and text at the same time. An alarming number of people walk into objects, fountains, holes in the sidewalk etc while texting and land in the ER. If you can’t walk and text, then driving and testing are clearly out of the question.
Personally, I can’t even sit and text. My boss sent me a text about a meeting, I texted back OK. At the meeting he turned to me and said “you sure keep your texts short” and I replied yes, and that one took me two tries.
lol keith, I remember back in elementary school in 1976 or so I used to read when walking to school. one day I was starting across the street, and I did not hear any cars coming but there this light post… ouch! like cartoon it was.
About a month ago while in a grocery store one evening I saw a young lady who was probably in her early 20s texting as she walked down an aisle towards me.
She was still texting when she walked right into a display at the end and knocked a few things over.
It didn’t even phase her. She kept on walking and kept on texting while leaving the merchandise on the floor. Now imagine her behind the wheel.
The lady in there a few years before may have been her mother. She was talking on the cell phone the entire time while checking out and walked right out in front of a potato chip truck. The driver slammed on the brakes and screeched to a halt about 3 feet from her and it didn’t even disturb the lady at all. She just wagged her finger at the driver, kept walkin’, and kept talkin’.
She tried to sue the mall after that video went viral. Funny thing is, no one know who it was until she came out about it when she brought up this lawsuit.
Do not drive while parenting (DWP).
I HATE texting. A good way for a woman to end the first and last date is to pay more attention to the electronic device in her hands rather than the living and breathing person in front of them. Forget Farmville! There are no real animals that will die if you don’t feed them or get them water!
I am one of the few from my generation who has completely rejected this technology. I don’t pay for this step backwards on my cell phone and people who text me send messages into space with no notification that it didn’t make it through. People will tell me “I sent you a message like a week ago and you never responded.” I tell them I never got a voicemail or e-mail so they must have done something wrong. I tell them that sending texts is hopeless when they let me know this is what they did.
I had the same thing happen to me on a different forum. If you have no contact with or history with the poster how can you judge them? I tend to let any posters that are different than me be themselves. It keeps it interesting!
MikeInNH Long Lost Magliozzi Brother
September 2012 edited September 2012
It’s be cool if they could make a jammer for phones so that when the car was in gear, only 911 could be called, and nothing received. Other than that, well, it’s silly that texting is as dangerous as drunk driving but the penalty is less.
I wouldn’t.
There are many times where my wife and I are traveling together and I’m on the phone doing work while she’s driving and visa-versa.
There was a fatal head on accident a few months ago on a curvy county road. The accident occurred where there were no curves. The surviving driver (people in the other vehicle survived) confessed to texting. Her boyfriend in the passenger seat died. If the texts were so important why could the boyfriend not have done them???
Even though technology has changed on an individual level not much else has changed. On the commuter rail people used to have their nose buried in a newspaper, now they are on a wireless device, no big change of day to day interaction.