I was driving down the Turnpike yesterday when a car with U.S. government plates passed me, and the driver was madly interfacing with what looked like some sort of electronic device.
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Well, I thought, President Obama might have signed an executive order prohibiting people driving government cars from texting while driving, but it doesn’t look like that guy got the message. So I caught up to him, and passed him, and I saw he wasn’t text messaging after all. He was punching instructions into a GPS unit.
So, text messaging is bad because it distracts drivers. Fooling around with your GPS is OK because if government people know where they’re going (which would be a first for many in government) and how to get there as soon as possible, they won’t waste gas the taxpayers paid for getting to their destination.
Am I missing something here?
I don’t think so. They’re both distractions and distracted drivers are more apt to cause accidents. According to testimony at a big government summit on the matter last week, you’re even more impaired if you’re busy texting while driving than you are if you’re slightly over the limit for blood alcohol content.
It’s just that the science has finally proved that texting while driving is incredibly dangerous and nobody has done a study about the dangers of fooling around with your GPS while whizzing along at 70 mph.
I figure it’s only a matter of time. But if the folks who pass laws are serious about making our roadways safer, they ought to forget prohibiting one dangerous and distracting activity at a time, and cut right to the chase. They ought to prohibit all things that can distract a driver while he or she is behind the wheel.
For example, last week the FederalAviationAdministration passed a rule that the pilots and co-pilots of airplanes carrying passengers can’t engage in idle chitchat in the cockpit while they’re flying. That’s because while reviewing the tapes of conversations of several pilots and co-pilots who were involved in horrific crashes, they found that lots of them were distracted by small talk before they nose-dived into the ground.
Makes sense to me, but why stop with people flying airplanes?
New Jersey was one of the first states in the nation to ban drivers from using hand-held cell phones, and the second state in the nation to prohibit drivers from texting while driving. I think it ought to be the first state in the nation to ban idle chitchat in an automobile that can distract the driver.
That would mean, of course, that parents with carloads of chittering kids would have to muzzle them before they leave the driveway. Maybe someone will invent little Cones of Silence to fit over the munchkins so their yapping doesn’t distract the driver and cause an accident. I don’t know about you, but I would have given my right arm for a few Cones of Silence back in the days when I was hauling vanloads of kids on family road trips and back and forth to soccer practice.
If I hadn’t been distracted by kids, I could have concentrated on the important things, like keeping the cheeseburger on my lap from falling off and turning the radio tuner to find a better station. Or, like a guy I actually saw reading the paper while driving a few weeks ago, I could have opened the sports section of the New York Times across my steering wheel and checked the box scores.
(Note to the readers who are getting ready to send me an email message calling me an idiot: I’m not serious about that.)
I’m a careful driver and I do not (usually) engage in most of those activities while driving. I know those are dangerous, distracting and stupid behaviors, and I police my own actions (usually).
But I also know that governments can pass all the laws their hearts desire and it won’t do any good unless people behind the wheel buy in and decide to change our own behavior. New Jersey has had a ban on hand-held cell phone use by drivers for years, and how much good has it done? How many drivers do you see talking on their cell phones every day? Lots, I’ll bet.
Come on, I’ll admit it. There have been times when I was driving and engaged in distracting and dangerous behavior.
Even though I knew it is against the law, I punched someone’s number into my cell phone, put it to my ear, and made a call. Of course, I rationalized it to myself. "Those other nincompoops are the problem," I said to myself. "I’m a good driver and I’m not the problem. I can do this just one time."
Then I T-boned a locomotive because I was talking and didn’t notice the railroad crossing gates were down.
Well, that didn’t happen, but it could have.
I don’t often talk on the phone, but I’ll admit to paying too much attention to my GPS from time to time. I keep the thing on my lap and glance at it frequently. I rationalize my transgressions by telling myself that if I’m sneaking glances at the GPS, I’m not taking my eyes off the road for longer spells to gawk at landmarks and road signs because I’m lost. And I get a kick out of the voice of the British lady who gives me directions. She’s got a naughty streak that comes out when she says, "Toll road ahead, can I help you get your change out?" or my favorite, "You’ve almost reached your destination but don’t stop yet."
(The sexy British lady drives my wife insane. When she’s in the car, she always makes me change the voice to John Cleese.)
So I’ll quit if you will. I’ll put my GPS on the windshield where it belongs and become part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
I don’t know what you parents with noisy kids are gonna do.
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I got a lot of mail about my column on Tom DeLay cutting a rug on "Dancing With The Stars," but the most amusing line came from Alan, who asked, "Isn’t Tom DeLay dancing one of the seven signs of the apocalypse?"
Yes, Alan, that’s number six. If you ever see tape of Rush Limbaugh wearing fishnet hose, that’s number seven and the world will explode within 24 hours.
Gregory Bean is the former executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].