Jerry Mouton wrote:
---- if you talk on the phone while driving,
>you're cruisin for a bruisin. It's a distraction, it's
>a basically different sort of distraction to listening
>to music or talking with a passenger. It's dangerous, and
>shame on you for doing it.
>
>No comments about women drivers, but if you want a real
>"loser count", try counting how many of the drivers
>you see doing bonehead moves or acting like they are
>in another world are talking on a phone of some type.
>
>It should be illegal, and I'm gonna work to make it so.
I agree with Jerry, all cell phone use, by drivers while on the road, should
be outlawed.(even though I admit to using the phone, occasionally, while
driving).
Here are a couple of small points to clarify the danger/distraction of
driver-use of cell phones.
The first is, sort-of, analagous to the situation where you are being helped
by someone (like in a store) and when the phone rings the clerk "drops" you
and takes the phone call as a greater priority rather than, first,
completing your transaction before helping the person on the end of the
phone. When driving, while conversing with a passenger, you don't feel the
need to keep talking when some trafic situation demands more of your
attention, I think, because you, sub-consciously, know your passenger will
understand since he/she (unless blind) can also see why you've interupted
the conversation. The same logic applies to the radio not being a dominant
distraction. However, the cell phone conversation, at times, seems to take
proirity over the main thing you should be doing, which is driving. I think
this is because, again sub-consiously, you know the person on the other end
will not understand a "rude" interuption of conversation so you can tend to
business. The result can be delayed response to an important driving
situation.
A more subtle effect of cell phone use, as compared with eratic driver
maneuvers caused by the "delayed response" mentioned above (or worse, a
colision), is the person who, in open road or speed-limit freeway trafic,
doesn't maintain a steady speed and gradually slows-down then, un-expectedly
speeds-up time and time-again (I don't want them on speed-control either)
because of the attention devoted to the conversation rather than the
"relaxed" situation on the road. This driver causes other drivers around
him/her to take inappropriate actions to get past/away from the cell phone
user only to be "foiled" by the cell phone user abruptly increasing speed.
The effect of this trafic flow distraction, especially when it happens more
than once to a surounding group in trafic is for some in the surrounding
trafic to get frustrated and attemp un-safe moves. Now who's initial fault
was the cause of that accident? This situation is not un-like trafic
re-actions to a drunk or a very timid driver as to the effect it has on
other drivers actions.
Don
|