Re: Personal Freedoms vs. Texting While Driving - A cyclist's perspective
As a cyclist, I had to read this thread all the way through…. You guys don't know fear until you're out there mixing it up (in your skivvies and 23mm wide tires, mind you) with the teens and soccer moms!
I have been enjoying riding my bicycle on roads for over 40 years. I live in Portland, OR, rated one of the best cities to ride a bike in the world. Still, I feel I must ride defensively, boldly, and in high-contrast clothing at all times, red-light blinking even during the day - just to HOPE to survive in today's auto culture! Friggin' Facebook icons on center displays in cars now? ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME?!
Anyway, lot's of thoughtful comments here…
I'm in the camp for enforcement (obviously, as my life depends on it), but with a twist. I say, embrace the high-tech: all cell phones (I think) are being tracked/triangulated at all times. I propose this, IF you are involved in an vehicular accident, it should be standard procedure to pull up your cell phone data an determine if you were talking/texting/surfing while driving. If, so, you go directly to jail! Perhaps then, as the word spread, people would elect to wait till they were not driving to use their phones.
There is no good excuse for using a phone in a moving vehicle, ever, in my opinion. We lived perfectly fine without it until 20 years ago.
Personally, all I had to do was unknowingly drive through a perfectly red light while TALKING on the phone, to realize what a potentially lethal distraction that device is. (Luckily, no one was around the downtown intersection at the time.) Our minds get caught up in the imagery of the conversation, while our brains temporarily filter out the complex visual information from the eye, pausing to give thought to a conversation. It is during these brief (and repeated) seconds of distraction that accidents can (and do) occur.
With car safety tech getting so advanced, serious injuries in vehicle-to-vehicle crashes are declining. I think it's partially due to this sense of security that people use their phones so freely while driving. That, and the entitlement complex Americans seem to have…
BAN ALL PHONE USE BY DRIVERS WHILE IN MOTION, I SAY. THAT GOES FOR "BUSINESS" RELATED CALLS TOO. Again, we lived perfectly fine without it until 20 years ago.
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