Cell Phones and Driving

Today the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) called for a ban on all cell phone talking and texting while driving. It brought out all the studies of the past couple of decades as well as newer ones, all of which show that driving while talking on a phone – and especially while texting – increases one’s chance of having an accident – and killing oneself or someone else – at least as much as driving while legally drunk. And tapping in phone numbers or text is only part of the distraction. As much or more of a problem is the psychic distance that someone enters when making a call or reading text messages – they move out of the context of their car and off into some nether-cyber-world, their minds literally off the road and into space. This is why it’s just as dangerous with hands-free phones as with hands-on phones (though more dangerous with texting). Here are just a few of the findings from various studies:

·         Between 2005 and 2008 deaths caused by distracted driving rose by 28%.

·         This is despite 35 states having restricted in some way calling and texting while driving.

·         About 20% of all drivers, and 50% of drivers aged 21-24, report texting or talking while driving.

·         At least 1 in 100 cars are driven by persons texting, emailing, or surfing the web.

·         And many more are talking on their phones.

People who talk and text and play games while driving think they are competent drivers able to multi-task while flying down the highway. So do drunk drivers. This is an issue that’s been going on for more than a decade, and I’m surprised it’s even still an issue. I began teaching my composition classes more than 12 years ago focusing on media and culture, and this is one of the issues we studied. The studies just emerging then clearly showed the dangers – again, not just the physical distraction but also the cognitive distraction – and those dangers have only been reinforced in study after study – and fatal accident after fatal accident – since then. After this appeal from the NTSB, if there isn’t a national ban on all phone (and digital) use while driving passed in the next year, then there is only one word to describe it – shame.

Drive Time

There was a time when I could drive eight, ten, twelve hours, even more at a time. One time I drove twelve hours over night from Wichita to Denver to hear Jimi Hendrix at Red Rocks (his last concert with the Experience, which because of the contention in the group ended up being only about thirty minutes long). Those times were in a galaxy far, far away. Now it’s uncomfortable for me to drive much more than six hours a day. I’ve occasionally been able to pull eight hours in recent years, but only rarely and with at least a couple of half-hour stops to stretch, eat. Truth is I’m just too old to sit behind the wheel of a car and fight the boredom and aches and pains that such a trip demands. My shoulders are in pain within an hour, my lower back within two, my feet (why, I don’t know) within three. Oh how I would like to have those days of twelve-hour overnight drives back. But there are so many other things I used to be able to do that I no longer can, this seems minor, at best. Merely another milestone on that long, slow drive to old age.

Thoughts while driving from Dallas to Austin:

Texans aren’t used to driving in snow or on ice and are dangerous when they try to do so. They drive either too fast or too slow. They don’t clear their cars of snow. They don’t turn their lights on in the dark or fog.

Half the AM radio stations broadcast Rush Limbaugh. A quarter of the other are religious talk. And the last quarter are sports talk.

Two anti-Obama billboards, one of a smiling George W. Bush with the tag, “Do You Miss Me Yet?”, and the other of Obama with the tag, “Socialist By Conduct.” Two other billboards simply American flags, though in context the implication seems clear.

The only NPR FM station is classical music.

Wherever you are, you don’t have to go very far to get liquor or beer. Maybe a bit further to get wine.

Texans consider 40° to be “cold.” They don’t seem to be much concerned about the wind chill factor.

There are only two rest areas (restrooms and picnic tables), but there are four picnic areas (no restrooms).

There are very few in the media who speak with a Texas accent. There are very few in restaurants or gas stations who don’t.

Columbus, Ohio

We drive into the full moon
Rising on our windshield