Study: 1 In 3 Americans Text And Drive

[AtheistCrusader]

123. Every. Single. Time you get behind the wheel of an automobile and hit the public roads

you are taking risks that endanger others. From the moment you turn the key. And that risk is predicated upon YOUR individual personal desire to get from one place to another, quicker. For that expedience you mortgage the safety of others.

We are, as Lady Astor, Churchill, George Bernard Shaw (or some other source lost in the mists of antiquity) said, "Now we are merely haggling over the price!”

Frankly there are a LOT of people on the road that have no business behind the wheel of several thousand pounds of glass and steel capable of velocities beyond what our own feet can carry us. And we DO have regulations on top speed, and things you can ingest or be under the influence of (including lack of sleep) and all of that is fine in the name of public safety.

But what actually works? What is actually necessary to ensure a good AVERAGE level of safety? Because that is what we are haggling over here. Average levels of safety. We set speed limits here, not by some careful physics experiment running in some test driver's car, but by the 85th Percentile. Meaning, the speed that 85% of drivers on that road will naturally go, without flying off into the weeds and dying horribly against a tree. That means, in the process of simply finding the proper speed of a road, we allow 15% of the traffic to first go blazing along beyond the average safe speed of the road. (Such speeds can be down rated for high accident locations, areas with multiple fatalities, local PD requests for speed traps, er I mean, 'safety corridors', etc)

All of these are risk/reward, and most of them are on the personal recognizance and responsibility of the individual user. We also have to consider unintended consequences. I'd much rather another person on the road that is texting, hold the phone up in line of sight and still be able to see the world, rather than to pass a ban, that results not in the user stopping the behavior (that may or may not make me safer at all), but worse, results in the user hiding the phone down, out of sight, so they truly take their eyes completely off the road.

This technology is here, saying 'you can't use it' in this manner isn't likely to work. Just being honest. You can do PSA's, try to keep people aware of the risks so they make better, average less risky decisions perhaps, but to ban it generally doesn't work. FORTUNATELY, the cell phone industry is fast evolving to audio-only technology that will make this obsolete. People aren't going to have to take their eyes off the road at all, very soon, and some phones actually already do a great job of it.

Getting back to my original point, saying 'don't do it, it's dangerous', is a meaningless plea to me, when the very act you are trying to make somewhat safer, on average, is in itself, dangerous. You don't have to drive a car. You might want to. You might have a job that you feel necessitates it. You might want to get to and from the store faster, with more stuff. But you don't HAVE to. There are plenty of options that can obviate the need to drive. Driving is risky to yourself and others. Pleas to 'don't do it, it's dangerous' ring hollow when the core activity itself is also risky, and you are simply choosing a different level of risk for yourself, not ZERO risk to others.