the darwin awards, lowell edition
it's 11:10am on a sunday morning. you're 22 years old. life is good. you're also doing 50 on a residential street, driving without your seatbelt, and, and here's the kicker, texting your buds on your cell phone. can you spell D-A-R-W-I-N ?
it's a profound tragedy for the kid, (who was from tewksbury, and not lowell, btw), his family, and his friends. (can you imagine being the guy or girl on the other end of that text correspondence?) but it's such a profoundly preventable thing, that it's hard to muster complete sympathy, either. he's dead, and now the rest of us are going to have to decide what to do with that information.
maybe i'm old, but i both buckle up and try to keep my car under control at all times. (spin-outs in the convertible notwithstanding). i also try to keep my cell phone in my pocket, and will do so ever that much more vigilantly from here on in. (though i have never texted from a moving car that i was driving, so there's that much going for me despite the bad habit of talking on the thing from time to time).
seems pretty reasonable--while driving, you keep your undivided attention on the road. (and your ears on your jen kearney and the lost onion recording from halloween's zep set that's playing on your ipod through your car stereo, but now i'm just braggin').
i'm just glad he didn't hit another car and drag some innocents into the carnage.
it's a profound tragedy for the kid, (who was from tewksbury, and not lowell, btw), his family, and his friends. (can you imagine being the guy or girl on the other end of that text correspondence?) but it's such a profoundly preventable thing, that it's hard to muster complete sympathy, either. he's dead, and now the rest of us are going to have to decide what to do with that information.
maybe i'm old, but i both buckle up and try to keep my car under control at all times. (spin-outs in the convertible notwithstanding). i also try to keep my cell phone in my pocket, and will do so ever that much more vigilantly from here on in. (though i have never texted from a moving car that i was driving, so there's that much going for me despite the bad habit of talking on the thing from time to time).
seems pretty reasonable--while driving, you keep your undivided attention on the road. (and your ears on your jen kearney and the lost onion recording from halloween's zep set that's playing on your ipod through your car stereo, but now i'm just braggin').
i'm just glad he didn't hit another car and drag some innocents into the carnage.
posted by kad barma at 10:18 AM
1 Comments:
In total agreement...or to borrow your earlier phrase, could not agree more, which is why I don't.
I wonder about plausible deniability for drivers that get busted. There are SO many uses for phones these days, so if a cop pulls you over for Texting While Driving, can you say you were actually just checking the weather, or the GPS in your phone, etc.?
Either way, the fact that you're momentarily "LOL" or your need to go over the grocery list with your spouse or partner on the way to the store is not worth risking your life or someone else's.
I'm also seeing a tie-in here with a general observation about cell phones: As someone explained to me several years before I ever got one, they can become a leash.
Stopping TWD is a great goal. I think a first step on the way there is a social compact that reads like this: If you text someone, or you call their cell, but don't get an IMMEDIATE response: Calm the f**k down!! Assume the best, and wait for a response. We (as a society) need to stop thinking it's somehow rude when someone isn't at their cell beck and call 24/7.
The idea that we need to somehow "apologize" to people just because we missed their call seems so ludicrous to me. Driving is a great reason not to pick up, as you said, but so are many other of life's daily functions, such as showering, running an errand without taking your phone, or maybe just enjoying a nice uninterrupted view of the sunrise.
Humans existed for milennia without cell phones. Let's stop conning ourselves into thinking our lives are so important that we can't walk the dog without one in our pocket.
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