Return of the Phone Drones: Driving Edition
I just spotted a cell-phone-oriented meme out there somewhere, and before it rages through my Friends List like a bad case of stomach flu, I'd like to say this for the record:
I hate cell phones. Really, really hate them. I'm not joking. I detest them in a car; I detest them near and far. If I had to choose a word to describe my feelings about cell phones, I think hate would be that word. Seriously, though: Cell phones. Me. Hate.
It's sad, really, because they have such potential to be useful. Thirty years ago, who would have imagined that if your car broke down in the ass end of nowhere, and it was -20 °F outside, you could just call someone to rescue you, and escape a slow death by hypothermia? That's really handy! And when we met my father and sister in Las Vegas this February, we didn't have to sit around in a hotel lobby all afternoon waiting for them to complete their drive from LA, a journey of notoriously unpredictable duration: Kathy just called them an hour before their earliest possible arrival and Dad gave us an ETA (not while driving, of course). And these days you even get a camera thrown in! How cool is that?
Alas, despite the great promise of this new technology, the large majority of people who own them seem to have employed their cell phones for the exclusive purpose of magnifying their inconsiderate, and often dangerous, behavior, and spreading it around so that everyone, everywhere, can partake from it. I don't own a cell phone, and never will as long as it is humanly possible not to, because I never want to have the slightest risk of ever being associated with these dolts. Even more importantly, I highly value my individuality and privacy.
I wanted to focus on the dangerous aspect of cell phone use in this rant, for on my bicycle commute to work yesterday I had three near misses with motor vehicles operated by clueless idiots yapping away on their phones. None of them even noticed me screaming at them about how they needed to put the phone down and pay attention.
Some justice still exists in the world, however, for the Washington State Senate recently passed a bill that prohibits the use of hand-held phones while driving. Unfortunately, the law falls short in two important respects. First, driving while talking on a cell phone is only considered a "secondary" offense, like seat belt laws in many states. In other words, the cops can't arrest someone merely for yakking away on a phone at the wheel; the arrest has to be for some other infraction (killing a pedestrian or bicyclist, for example). New York has passed a law making driving on cell phones a primary offense. Unfortunately, that's 49 states too few.
Second, the new law applies only to hand-held phones; headsets are still legal. Well, what's the use of an extra hand if there's no BRAIN to CONTROL IT?!? That's my summary of a statistical analysis of the "hands-free" problem. See here for a less impassioned and more detailed discussion.
Here's a straightforward principle that ought to motivate laws regarding cell-phone use on the road:
If you are important enough to be talking on a phone in a moving vehicle, you are important enough to hire someone else to do the driving for you.
That's right-if you aren't having a life-or-death emergency, leave that sucker off or pull over to have your conversation. Breaking up a kids' argument at home is not a life-or-death emergency. Nor is discussing what movie you want to see tonight. It's. Just. Not. That. Important.
Now emergency personnel-ambulance drivers and paramedics-use radios while driving, and I don't have a problem with that. First of all, they really need to communicate quickly; it's a life-or-death matter. Second, these people are trained at the art of talking and driving at the same time. So are pilots. They are motivated to pay special attention to their situation. They can't afford to zone out. (Some of them probably do, but there is intensive selective pressure against it, to drag out an evolutionary term.)
I think you'll agree that, of everyone else, health-care workers have more need than anyone else to quickly answer a phone summons. Guess what: they were able to handle emergencies just fine before the advent of cell phones. Medical professionals, if they need to answer a call that instant, are already at the hospital on in-house call. Otherwise, the situation is never urgent enough to justify talking over the phone while driving somewhere. They would still have to travel to the hospital or clinic, undoubtedly taking quite a long time to get there, by emergency standards. So, they can fulfill whatever role is required either by talking on the phone at the side of the road, or by driving wherever they need to get to and then dispensing information.
Now practically everyone who participates in this affront to sentience (and if you do, please don't tell me, for I like to think my friends have some sense), will, upon reading this rant, immediately react with a self-righteous thought of the general form, "But I'm safer than all those idiots when I use my phone on the road." Sorry to disappoint you, but you're not. Does it anger you that some people believe that their particular brand of religion is objectively closer to the Ultimate Truth than everyone else's? Or that their screaming, ill-behaved children are somehow not a bit annoying, unlike all others? Exactly the same kind of self-centeredness, which I like to call the "My Shit Doesn't Stink" phenomenon, is seen in people who think that they, and nobody else, can safely operate a cell phone while driving. Ironically, they're usually the ones perpetrating the most egregiously stupid stunts on the road.
Here's a thought experiment. Imagine yourself breezing along, shooting the shit with a friend on the phone. Your conversation is suddenly interrupted by a sickening thump! A small body traces a graceful parabolic arc through the air before landing in a broken heap. You've just killed a child crossing the road. At a crosswalk. In an instant, your life is completely changed, forever. Picture that awful free-fall sensation in the pit of your stomach as the horrible realization gradually dawns on you, during those few seconds between the accident and when the kid's parents start totally freaking out. You'll have just enough time to kick yourself, mentally, because you could have noticed the crosswalk and would have been looking out, but you'd let your thoughts wander for only a second.
I try very carefully to keep my attention on the road, but on at least one occasion I have narrowly escaped serious injury, and I was distracted for only a second. I got lucky. You might not.
You might also have thought, "Well, reading maps and doing makeup and yelling at one's children while driving are just as bad, and they're not against the law." I agree completely. Anyone who participates in any of those activities at the wheel should be cited for excessive stupidity, but unfortunately, many kinds of distractions are too transient to detect reliably, such that they might be legislated against. But the phone is easy to spot, and cell phones are far more common than any other single source of idiotic driving. Some distractions are unavoidable. Ever had a wasp fly in your window and land right on your arm? Cell-phone use is premeditated and is easily prevented. Just give that on/off switch a good smart jab. You do know where the on/off switch is, right?
I have read that some car insurance companies won't pay up if you get in an accident while gabbing on a cell phone and you are found at fault, but I don't have any concrete proof of this.
Can it get even worse? Is there a way to use a cell phone as an accessory to an even more brainless act? With colossal disappointment in humanity, I can say that there definitely is. Once in a while I see someone on the Burke-Gilman Trail talking on a cell phone while riding a bicycle. At full speed, with a huge wobble because they can barely keep pointed straight. If anyone ever tells you that the human race has stopped evolving, now you have unequivocal proof to the contrary.
Just in case there is someone I haven't offended yet, here's one related mini-rant while I've got the momentum (and am still thinking about the cell-phone meme): If you spend a significant portion of your day deciding which ringtone to use, why not try the "what a cell phone sounds like when muffled by the wall of my rectum" tone? The universal feature of all ringtones-and this follows from the fundamental principle of alert sounds of any type, including sirens and what have you-is that they are annoying. They are specifically designed to make you want to stop hearing them. The human ear is most sensitive in a frequency range of about 1-4 kHz (roughly the topmost two octaves of the piano), and it is no coincidence that screaming babies and ringtones both operate within this band. So set that atrocious piece of consumer hardware to "vibrate" and give the rest of humanity a break. Too bad they don't have a setting that causes the phone, when an incoming call is detected, to emit 500 volts. There Ain't No Justice.
Whaddaya know, I got another one, but it's just for the men. Hey guys: You need to realize that it's impossible to look macho while talking on a cell phone. Just imagine that, instead of a phone, you're holding a Beanie Baby or the first daisy of spring gently to your face. That's what you look like: a total pansy. But if you don't care about looking super-masculine, it's not a problem. Certainly I wouldn't give a shit.
I hate cell phones. Really, really hate them. I'm not joking. I detest them in a car; I detest them near and far. If I had to choose a word to describe my feelings about cell phones, I think hate would be that word. Seriously, though: Cell phones. Me. Hate.
It's sad, really, because they have such potential to be useful. Thirty years ago, who would have imagined that if your car broke down in the ass end of nowhere, and it was -20 °F outside, you could just call someone to rescue you, and escape a slow death by hypothermia? That's really handy! And when we met my father and sister in Las Vegas this February, we didn't have to sit around in a hotel lobby all afternoon waiting for them to complete their drive from LA, a journey of notoriously unpredictable duration: Kathy just called them an hour before their earliest possible arrival and Dad gave us an ETA (not while driving, of course). And these days you even get a camera thrown in! How cool is that?
Alas, despite the great promise of this new technology, the large majority of people who own them seem to have employed their cell phones for the exclusive purpose of magnifying their inconsiderate, and often dangerous, behavior, and spreading it around so that everyone, everywhere, can partake from it. I don't own a cell phone, and never will as long as it is humanly possible not to, because I never want to have the slightest risk of ever being associated with these dolts. Even more importantly, I highly value my individuality and privacy.
I wanted to focus on the dangerous aspect of cell phone use in this rant, for on my bicycle commute to work yesterday I had three near misses with motor vehicles operated by clueless idiots yapping away on their phones. None of them even noticed me screaming at them about how they needed to put the phone down and pay attention.
Some justice still exists in the world, however, for the Washington State Senate recently passed a bill that prohibits the use of hand-held phones while driving. Unfortunately, the law falls short in two important respects. First, driving while talking on a cell phone is only considered a "secondary" offense, like seat belt laws in many states. In other words, the cops can't arrest someone merely for yakking away on a phone at the wheel; the arrest has to be for some other infraction (killing a pedestrian or bicyclist, for example). New York has passed a law making driving on cell phones a primary offense. Unfortunately, that's 49 states too few.
Second, the new law applies only to hand-held phones; headsets are still legal. Well, what's the use of an extra hand if there's no BRAIN to CONTROL IT?!? That's my summary of a statistical analysis of the "hands-free" problem. See here for a less impassioned and more detailed discussion.
Here's a straightforward principle that ought to motivate laws regarding cell-phone use on the road:
If you are important enough to be talking on a phone in a moving vehicle, you are important enough to hire someone else to do the driving for you.
That's right-if you aren't having a life-or-death emergency, leave that sucker off or pull over to have your conversation. Breaking up a kids' argument at home is not a life-or-death emergency. Nor is discussing what movie you want to see tonight. It's. Just. Not. That. Important.
Now emergency personnel-ambulance drivers and paramedics-use radios while driving, and I don't have a problem with that. First of all, they really need to communicate quickly; it's a life-or-death matter. Second, these people are trained at the art of talking and driving at the same time. So are pilots. They are motivated to pay special attention to their situation. They can't afford to zone out. (Some of them probably do, but there is intensive selective pressure against it, to drag out an evolutionary term.)
I think you'll agree that, of everyone else, health-care workers have more need than anyone else to quickly answer a phone summons. Guess what: they were able to handle emergencies just fine before the advent of cell phones. Medical professionals, if they need to answer a call that instant, are already at the hospital on in-house call. Otherwise, the situation is never urgent enough to justify talking over the phone while driving somewhere. They would still have to travel to the hospital or clinic, undoubtedly taking quite a long time to get there, by emergency standards. So, they can fulfill whatever role is required either by talking on the phone at the side of the road, or by driving wherever they need to get to and then dispensing information.
Now practically everyone who participates in this affront to sentience (and if you do, please don't tell me, for I like to think my friends have some sense), will, upon reading this rant, immediately react with a self-righteous thought of the general form, "But I'm safer than all those idiots when I use my phone on the road." Sorry to disappoint you, but you're not. Does it anger you that some people believe that their particular brand of religion is objectively closer to the Ultimate Truth than everyone else's? Or that their screaming, ill-behaved children are somehow not a bit annoying, unlike all others? Exactly the same kind of self-centeredness, which I like to call the "My Shit Doesn't Stink" phenomenon, is seen in people who think that they, and nobody else, can safely operate a cell phone while driving. Ironically, they're usually the ones perpetrating the most egregiously stupid stunts on the road.
Here's a thought experiment. Imagine yourself breezing along, shooting the shit with a friend on the phone. Your conversation is suddenly interrupted by a sickening thump! A small body traces a graceful parabolic arc through the air before landing in a broken heap. You've just killed a child crossing the road. At a crosswalk. In an instant, your life is completely changed, forever. Picture that awful free-fall sensation in the pit of your stomach as the horrible realization gradually dawns on you, during those few seconds between the accident and when the kid's parents start totally freaking out. You'll have just enough time to kick yourself, mentally, because you could have noticed the crosswalk and would have been looking out, but you'd let your thoughts wander for only a second.
I try very carefully to keep my attention on the road, but on at least one occasion I have narrowly escaped serious injury, and I was distracted for only a second. I got lucky. You might not.
You might also have thought, "Well, reading maps and doing makeup and yelling at one's children while driving are just as bad, and they're not against the law." I agree completely. Anyone who participates in any of those activities at the wheel should be cited for excessive stupidity, but unfortunately, many kinds of distractions are too transient to detect reliably, such that they might be legislated against. But the phone is easy to spot, and cell phones are far more common than any other single source of idiotic driving. Some distractions are unavoidable. Ever had a wasp fly in your window and land right on your arm? Cell-phone use is premeditated and is easily prevented. Just give that on/off switch a good smart jab. You do know where the on/off switch is, right?
I have read that some car insurance companies won't pay up if you get in an accident while gabbing on a cell phone and you are found at fault, but I don't have any concrete proof of this.
Can it get even worse? Is there a way to use a cell phone as an accessory to an even more brainless act? With colossal disappointment in humanity, I can say that there definitely is. Once in a while I see someone on the Burke-Gilman Trail talking on a cell phone while riding a bicycle. At full speed, with a huge wobble because they can barely keep pointed straight. If anyone ever tells you that the human race has stopped evolving, now you have unequivocal proof to the contrary.
Just in case there is someone I haven't offended yet, here's one related mini-rant while I've got the momentum (and am still thinking about the cell-phone meme): If you spend a significant portion of your day deciding which ringtone to use, why not try the "what a cell phone sounds like when muffled by the wall of my rectum" tone? The universal feature of all ringtones-and this follows from the fundamental principle of alert sounds of any type, including sirens and what have you-is that they are annoying. They are specifically designed to make you want to stop hearing them. The human ear is most sensitive in a frequency range of about 1-4 kHz (roughly the topmost two octaves of the piano), and it is no coincidence that screaming babies and ringtones both operate within this band. So set that atrocious piece of consumer hardware to "vibrate" and give the rest of humanity a break. Too bad they don't have a setting that causes the phone, when an incoming call is detected, to emit 500 volts. There Ain't No Justice.
Whaddaya know, I got another one, but it's just for the men. Hey guys: You need to realize that it's impossible to look macho while talking on a cell phone. Just imagine that, instead of a phone, you're holding a Beanie Baby or the first daisy of spring gently to your face. That's what you look like: a total pansy. But if you don't care about looking super-masculine, it's not a problem. Certainly I wouldn't give a shit.