As a long-time motorcyclist, I will say that I have a certain bigotry directed at those who use their cell-phones while driving. When dealing with my mum during the hieght of the crisis, it was not uncommon to find me talking on two phones at once, and yes one of them was a cell-phone. I did find myself using a bluetooth headset behind the wheel and am not above a little self-loathing for having done so. I will say San Diego driving is kind of a trip, you’d never know there was a ban on hand-held cell-phones in California based on my experience down there. The police are obviously negligent, I saw two instances where a driver was holding a cell-phone to his head, with a patrol car taking no notice. It is fairly obvious no one is worried about getting pulled over down there.
Those wacky Brits went out and made a movie about it Very good production values. But lets face it, those blighters are driving on the wrong side of the road, what do they fucking think is going to happen? I don’t suppose anyone is actually suggesting banning grown-ups, from texting while driving are they? Well, so far, 25 states have banned the practice, which begs the question, what the hell are the other 25 thinking?
The first person, I saw doing it was an adult female. Be kind of interesting to know how death by texting breaks down on a gender basis. The woman who crashed a train while texting comes to mind.
Basically, you are more socially responsible and more in control of your vehicle while driving drunk than you are talking even hands-free on a cell-phone. Texting=dead drunk on heroin with your eyes closed. We’ve gone from a nation of semi-illiterates, to a planet of reading/writing/driving idiots, which is kind of impressive, no matter how you think about it.
There are so many reasons why this is wrong, that it boggles anyone would do it in the first place.
The tests have been run demonstrating the madness of such behavior. I think it would be interesting to video a driving course while people, text, drive, and so on. I would bet on the teenagers doing better than the “more experienced drivers” on this one for a variety of reasons, even though the studies point to their being a bigger problem.
I suspect the higher mortality rate in teens has to do with driving, older, crappier, cars, combined with the fact they were texting before they were driving, meaning a hundred percent adoption rate before they get behind the wheel. The ancients, such as myself, start driving first, then slowly adapt to using cell-phones while driving.
Safer cars and fewer users among older drivers, creates the illusion this is just another incidence of those crazy kids killing themselves. But if you were to filter out the non-cell-phone user, and select for cars of similar safety features, you will find that teens are less likely to have an accident and die.
Again, I am for banning the use of cell-phones, hands free, built in, for talking, texting, movie watching, etc.
I’m basing my Wild Assed Guess teens are less of a risk, on the evolutionary idea that spoke language is a late comer to the game and text/typing overwhelms the physical motor response associated with driving. In other words reading and writing are physical acts, not mental ones. This is a problem when you try to separate the mind from body, but not so much when you think that we evolved on the planet minus any holy spirit talk.
