Stop! Look! Listen? 3
Via Huffington Post:
“We’re talking about people walking sort of tuned in and in the process of being tuned in, tuned out,” Kruger said. “Tuned out to the world around them. They’re walking into speeding cars. They’re walking into buses. They’re walking into one another and it’s creating a number of fatalities that have been documented right here in the city.”
I sometimes wonder about persons who always have their little speakers stuck in their little ears. They miss so much of the world around them.
I haven’t seen any statistics that indicate that the those same speakers help to keep drivers from missing them. If anyone has any statistics, let me know.
But distractions can certainly be an issue.
I recently took my defensive driving refresher (that insurance discount is well worth three hours every three years). The instructor told us that there had been at least one car crash in Delaware in which the driver who caused the crash was TEXT-MESSAGING her daughter on her cell phone at the time of the crash (not to mention the many when the drivers were yakking on their cell phones).
Somehow, it’s difficult for me to see a pedestrian’s iPodding as being in the same class as that.
Thoughts?
(Aside) Delaware is slowing moving towards prohibiting cell phone use while driving.
February 7, 2007 at 10:56 pm
I can assure you that the people who are drafting Delaware’s cell-phone legislation have at some point discussed it on their own cell phones from behind the wheel.
But anyway, I fear we are becoming a world whose definition of good public service is just how imaginative one can be in regulating others’ behavior. From cigarettes to cell phones to trans fats, the Sen. Krugers of the world fear they will have no point to their lives if they can’t control others.
February 8, 2007 at 8:11 am
I wondered if you would see this article. I saw it on the news, & figured more of Big Brother actions. I want to see them control New Yorkers when thsy cross a street. Can anything control a New Yorker?
In Aurora, there is a representative (Democrat, of course) that wants to prohibit smoking in your own car now. Says it’s to protect the kids in the car. Nothing was said about when there aren’t kids in the car.
In Boulder (the city that time forgot, they’re still stuck in the 70’s in some aspects) if you smoke in your car, you have to keep the windows up.
We’ve had drunks run red lights & kill a family, & a kid creating a text message while driving & kill a man on a bike, but JUST NOW the state patrol is asking if a cell phone was involved in an accident.
I don’t know how much good a new law will do about cell phones or IPods in a crosswalk. Especially in New York.
February 8, 2007 at 7:04 pm
The law won’t do a damned bit of good. Using hand-held cell phones while driving has been illegal in New Jersey for at least a couple of years. Can’t tell it by the behavior of the drivers.
Frankly, I tend to favor those laws. I’ve nearly been killed by several people who were so busy yakking they didn’t notice that the road was curving so they went straight while I followed the road.
I have to say, though, none of them were in little white trucks.