Like many, many others out there, I feel somewhat lost when I don’t have my phone near me, however, my need to call, text, ‘gram or watch tictoc vids can be stifled when I’m driving at 100km/h on the highway – alas not for some and that’s why it’s this week’s rant.
Oddly I’m a little bit mixed on this subject, as I grew up in an age when being on a carphone was one of the coolest things ever, have you seen Sonny Crockett speeding through Miami in a Ferrari barking orders through his phone!
Fast forward a few years, (ok a few decades) and phone usage when driving is NOT COOL and ILLEGAL. And for good reason.
In the US, the National Safety Council reports that cell phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes each year. Of that, nearly 390,000 injuries occur each year from accidents caused by texting while driving, so 1 out of every 4 car accidents in the United States is caused by texting and driving. Basically texting while driving is 6x more likely to cause an accident than driving drunk and answering a text takes away your attention for about five seconds, meaning that travelling at 55 mph, that’s enough time to travel the length of a football field. (I assume watching a toc vid is worse).
And yet, every day I still see way too many people doing who knows what on the phone, and not just in slow moving traffic, as I said earlier, going at 100k’s on the highway – it’s mental.
I am a realist and I appreciate that there are times when a call must be made, and your phone is not hooked up to the hand’s free car system, but this really should be a rarity and VERY brief, not a full on conversation! As for social media interaction, I simply shake my head in despair.
What if the car is stationary? I hear you ask. Well I put it to you, how many times have you seen people on the phone in front of you when the lights change or the congested SH1 traffic in front pulls away, some cars even have a system that alerts the driver now – I guess so that those behind don’t have to.
Other car manufacturers have gone the other way and have their wireless chargers or phone spaces hidden from view, which I guess is a good move for those that lack self restraint, but for some, even a lock box in the boot wouldn’t stop them.
Anyway, the simple fact is that being on the phone when driving is dangerous, illegal and most importantly ANNOYS ME, so stop it now! That’s all.
