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Eye on Soaps' Hang Up And Drive! February 5, 2007
I have never come close to having an accident while dialing, looking for or talking on my cell phone. Yes, by January 1st, I had a hands-free headset, even though they look absolutely goony as hell. The biggest objection I have to the hands-free headsets is my own reaction to people who are using them. When I am in a store or outside walking and I come upon someone speaking in a very animated fashion to themselves, my first impression is not that they are on the phone, but they are frickin loony toons. Now that hands-free headsets are all the rage, it's definitely much harder to isolate the genuinely batshit, talking to oneself and expecting an answer crazy people from those who are having a perfectly normal phone conversation. I like to know the score, you know? My thought on the banning of hand-held cell phones while driving is that like with prohibition, if you're going to do something, do it all the way. If you are going to make marijuana illegal "for our own protection," make alcohol and cigarettes and bacon fat and refined sugar illegal too. None of this half-assed stuff. If you're going to make hand-held cell phones illegal while driving, get rid of the other activities that are dangerous to do while driving. Give people tickets for those dangers as well. As I said, I've never even come close to having an accident while interacting with my cell phone, but hey, my hand is up and I'll be the first to admit that I've had some close calls (no pun intended) while doing a few other things that weren't exactly compatible with navigating a 2 ton vehicle at top speed. Here are my suggestions, based on experience both personal and having witnessed in other people: 1) No more make up. If you didn't put it on before you left where ever you came from, if you can't pull over to put it on and if you can't wait until you get there to slap it in on in the parking lot, you don't get to wear it. You have to let them see what you really look like without the airbrushing and accentuating. 2) No more driving with kids. No more popping your shoulder out of socket to swat errant kids in the back seat. No more getting crap thrown at you from the rearward peanut section. No more scccuuhhreaming baby who is shaking with fury over whatever they can't have because you are driving and while you're at it, no more trying to retrieve the fallen pacifier in the back seat while you're still behind the wheel of the moving vehicle in the front seat. 3) No more driving through fast food places unless you are absolutely not going to crack the bag even a little peek before you get home. Managing a Big Mac with one hand while driving with another is infinitely more dangerous than holding a cell phone to your ear with one hand while driving with the other. No more Mickey D's until you're in your driveway, bub. 4) No more music. Sorry. You cannot possibly safely hunt for CDs in the center console or over head on the visor CD holder or in the glove box and drive at the same time even if you think you can. You just can't. No more perusing the channels on your 1000 channel satellite radio. No more punching buttons on your AM/FM dial until you find a station you like. No more fighting with the cassette tape that is being munched by your antique stereo while you cruise along at 80mph. Nope. Music is now banned. 5) No more arguing with your spouse in the car. Period. I shouldn't have to explain this one. 6) Convexly, no sex while driving of any kind, shape or persuasion. (Phone sex is even doubly illegal now.) 7) Just like with the no sex rule and the no make up rule, you also are forbidden from changing clothes, even taking off your jacket if you get too warm or your shoes if your feet get a little steamy while driving. What you were wearing when you left is what you'd better be wearing when you get there unless you pulled over and came to a safe and complete stop in some roomy location along the way. 8) No more sneezing while driving. 9) No more sleeping while driving. If the turtles on the side of the road wake you up more than once as you glide over them, you don't get to drive any more until you snooze in some location that is NOT behind the wheel. 10) KNOW YOUR ROUTE! No more missing your turn and whipping it over at the second past the last second, no more backing up on the freeway to make your exit. Those are my demands if we are going to ban cell phone usage. These are my other incidental requests for altered driving behaviors: - Put your kids in a damned car seat and keep them there. - In another "I don't have to make this law because it already is one" suggestion, don't leave your kids alone in a running vehicle, even "just to run inside and do this little thing." - For that matter, don't leave your kids alone in a vehicle! - Also, don't leave your vehicle running while you not with it. Have you never seen that episode of "Cops" where the guy has to break in the drivers window and risk his life to stop the car that was running and unattended and malfunctioned? Do you really have no idea how dangerous this is just so you don't have to be bothered to restart your car again when you get back out to it? - Lose the road rage. We're all trusting each other to drive with half a brain engaged out there and we don't need people taking out their angsty rage over their crappy life on those of us who are just trying to get from point A to point B. The driver who cuts you off may be rushing a laboring wife to the hospital or hurrying to get to the hospital because they just got a call saying their child is injured. The person driving erratically in front of you might have just buried their husband or had their dog put to sleep. You never know another person's story and to automatically presume malice is arrogant and snotty. The time will come when you need some extra consideration and having put that good karma out there, you'll likely get it back when it's your turn. - Don't expect that people are going to move aside just because you are coming off on an on ramp and onto a freeway. The idea is that even though you do not have a stop sign or traffic light, you are expected to wait until there is an opening before you merge into the freeway traffic. - Don't bitch at people who are actually going the speed limit just because you want to speed. - Don't power through the lane that is ending and then get pissy because drivers don't let you in when they stayed in the lane that is continuing. Wait your turn and next time, stay in the lane that is continuing. - If you are in a drive through, you do not have the right of way into the parking lot. The cars moving IN the parking lot have the right of way. - A dog or other animal who is loose in a car is as dangerous (or more so) than a child in the car. Transport animals in crates or secure them with pet seatbelts. But back to cell phones. I love mine. I only have cell service in town. It's merely an alarm clock to me most of the time, but I absolutely love not EVER having to look around for a payphone, which are becoming more extinct by the day. I carry a phone book in my car, so I can look up any numbers I need. Whether it's an inflated sense of importance of needing to accessible at all times or a distinct fear of being truly alone and cut off, cell phones are here to stay. Whether they shoot cancer causing microwaves into our heads as we talk or cause us to drive the wrong way down the freeway, I don't see them going away any time soon. I'm just glad they aren't the size (and weight) of a brick any more and come with luggage!
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