DISTRACTED
DRIVING
Story by
Lois Grace
As
soon as cell phones arrived in our
lives, things started happening. It
was 1984, and much like George Orwell's
prophetic novel the world changed
before our very eyes. As a lover of
all things vintage, I don't welcome
change with open arms. I know it's
necessary, and I adapt as best I can
to new things and technology but this
ability to use a telephone wherever
and whenever we chose made me think
of all the liabilities attached to
this new idea. A very big liability
with cell phone use while driving
is being distracted: your attention
is diverted from the task at hand,
and to make matters worse you may
be looking at the phone's screen instead
of the road. This subject was driven
painfully home for me yesterday when
our neighbor came around the corner
and plowed directly into the rear
of our travel trailer parked at the
curb. More on that in a minute. But
first, let's talk a bit about why
this is a problem in the first place.
Cell
phones have become such an integral
part of modern life that it's now
nearly impossible to do business or
live without one. You can pay bills
on your phone, take pictures with
your phone, bank on your phone, access
social media on your phone, and any
number of other activities I am sure
I don't know about. Never in a million
years did I ever dream that people
would actually want to talk on a phone,
while driving. It simply never occurred
to me that someone would do such a
thing! If you wanted to make a phone
call, you found a pay phone and stopped
long enough to make the call. With
cell phones, there is no need to stop
and get out of your car. Wireless
earbuds and hands-free technology
allowed us to call anyone, any time.
But should we? This ability became
problematic so quickly that many states
enacted legislation to make it illegal
to call from your moving vehicle and
required drivers to use a hands-free
device to dial that call. It is, in
my opinion, too little, too late.
The genie is out of the bottle and,
now freed, is showing he has no intention
of being recaptured.
Yesterday
afternoon we heard a loud, strange
noise in the street so went out to
investigate. Our neighbor, on her
way home, had turned the corner at
the end of our street and, possibly
distracted by her cell phone, had
crashed into the rear corner of our
trailer. She then went on to hit the
same rear corner of our next door
neighbor's car, breaking the axle,
crushing the side, and pushing that
car into the car in front of it. Her
Mercedes 300 SUV came to rest in the
middle of the street with her behind
the wheel and enveloped in air bags.
Our poor trailer was destroyed and
will likely be a total loss. There
is no way the damage can be fixed.
Our neighbor's car, an older Subaru
WRX wagon was also totaled with a
possible broken axle and left side
body damage. That neighbor told me
he'd seen her exit the car with her
phone in her hand, sending a text.
Now, in all fairness, I did not see
that but what would cause someone
to hit a trailer and two cars as she
drove down her own street to get home?
I wondered if she was having a seizure
of some sort, or had blacked out.
When I asked her what happened, she
said she didn't know! She appeared
to be dazed but the police that soon
arrived tested her on the scene and
said she was not under the influence
of anything. The enormity of what
she'd done was probably sinking in.
I think she knows perfectly well what
the cause of all this was, and she
was not about to admit it to any of
us.
Studies
done have shown that cell phone use
while driving is nearly as bad as driving
drunk, and in some cases, worse. We
now have cars that will drive themselves
and park themselves. We have systems
in place that tell us where we are and
where we are going. We have cameras
on the back so we don't hit anything.
Throw the distraction of a ringing phone
into this mix and you have a perfect
storm. How about we all just get back
to doing what we are supposed to do
while driving: operating a machine!
Cars are machines that are capable of
killing, a fact illustrated every day
in horrific fashion. Let's bring back
good old-fashioned Driver's Ed, classes
where you actually learned something
from teachers who are above average
in skills, and certified to teach. Let's
raise the penalties for distracted driving,
and ENFORCE the laws already in place.
Instead of our trailer parked at the
curb, what if it was a kid on a tricycle........or
one of us out to get the mail (our mailbox
is at that curb, next to our trailer).......or
an elderly person in a walker on the
sidewalk. Instead of ruining 2 cars
and a camper, she could have killed
someone. And has all this technology
really made us better drivers, or the
world a better place? I think not. I
have not researched the subject and
there is not room here for a debate.
My opinion is that the world is just
as hazardous as before, but with new
and different hazards. And now, the
added danger of drivers not actually
DRIVING.
