Monday, September 15, 2008
* Ban Text Messaging While Driving
This weekends trip to South Carolina shined a light on me. Text messaging while driving is extremely dangerous. You see, Phillip brought along one of his friends who is a chronic text message user. Even when it was his turn to drive. I told the kid a dozen times to stop - but he wouldn't listen to me. The kid is seriously addicted and needs counseling. It was to a point where I had to pull him from the wheel - I felt so unsafe with his actions. I've never been so behind any ordnance in my life.
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According to various news reports, the horrific commuter train crash (killing 24+ people) in California a couple of days ago, was caused by the engineer text messaging while driving the train!
I agree texting while driving is insane, but this will be another ordinance for the City of Chicago that won't be enforced.
I actually think the way the distracted driving ordinance is currently written is very well done. Much better (IMO) than the hands free ordinance. It just gets to the heart of the matter: if you are driving, pay attention to what you are doing!
Yes, mcl, investigators of that horrific crash are looking at the cellphone records of some teens who the motorman was texting in the moments before the crash.
While this ordinance may not be aggressively enforced, it should be passed as it will provide authorities with legal leverage against a guilty driver who had caused a crash resulting in injuries or fatalities, because he was texting, and will give victims trying to recover damages from such drivers another weapon to use in civil courts.
I totally agree that no one should be texting while driving.
But...
In the train accident, by the time they were "moments before the crash," there was nothing that could be done. The question is why were the trains heading toward each other on the same track. That happened long before the collision.
This "text message" headline, while it may eventually prove informative, is merely eye-ball-grabbing lazy journalism at this point.
I had a friend texting while she was driving last week - I couldn't believe it - this wasn't a teenager but a professional woman. I said - are you crazy? I would like to see it passed and the cell phone law enforced!
You're wrong, jeff in chicago. The engineer was busy texting and did not see the RED signal that warned him of the on-coming freight train! Had he been paying attention, he would have had time to stop his Metro passenger train!
The trains engineer may have also missed a yellow signal which almost always precedes a red on a railroad.
Yellow or amber on a RR means a little bit different than on a road.
It means caution, prepare to stop at the next signal. He didn't & he & 25 others died.
Texting certainly takes more concentration than talking on a cell phone while driving and that is illegal in Chicago. Thanks to the cabbie who clipped me the other day while I was driving my bike, I now have a permanent scar above my eye. I didn't get his plate number as my face was in the asphalt as he was driving away.
Text messaging while driving is perfectly safe as long as you have a passenger hold your beer while you are doing it.
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