-
- |
-
- |
- |
- 8
The New York Times has another well-reported piece in what I hope becomes a crusade on the unbelievably terrifying and widespread new habit of texting while driving. (And I hope Slate's own Will Saletan continues his writing on this issue.) Texting while driving! I understand where you should all meet for pizza is a crucially important piece of information, but how much carnage to we have to endure before we treat this insanity as as serious a violation as drunk driving? Studies have shown people reading and sending texts while behind the wheel are often more dangerous than drunks, yet the laws are lax and law enforcement weak. We need public service campaigns similar to those which have helped drive down rates of smoking, so that people understand the utter devastation that's caused by going 60 miles an hour while paying no attention whatsoever to the road. So Double Xers, have you ever texted while driving? And what would it take to get you to vow to never do it again?
Photograph by Getty Images.
-
- |
-
- |
- |
- 1
Emily and Will, I completely agree with you that it’s time to get serious about cell phone use while driving—and I think there’s an interesting generational angle to consider as a crusade, I hope, gets under way. Texting is an ideal impetus for real action: It’s so hair-raisingly obvious why you shouldn’t be doing that at the wheel, plus it’s kids who text more than adults. We tend to like liberty-curtailing crusades better when they focus on youth.
But as the experts will all tell you, it really helps if adults walk the talk—or, in this case, forgo the talk while in the car. And because plain old phoning is not so self-evidently dangerous—after all, no one’s proposing that chatting in the car be prohibited, or that radios and CD players be banned—generating a sense of urgency for the broader prohibition is going to be much harder. We should beware of expecting a lot of high dudgeon about delinquent young texters to do the job—and of letting it blind us to the thornier challenge of getting grownup yakkers to set a stringently good example.
-
- |
-
- |
- |
- 4
I am too embarrassed by Emily's trumpets-blaring charge against texting while driving to admit to doing it. But if I did, my sin would of course be committed in the service of the holy grail of multi-tasking. The research the NYT cites, however, has reminded me that when the risk entailed by squeezing two tasks into the same minutes is death, it is utterly and obviously a risk not to take.
Ann, you're right to chide us for talking on the phone while driving, too, even it's not quite as crazy dangerous, because of the message it sends to kids. The upright answer is to quit doing this cold turkey, too. But if we're honest, how many of us will in reality fudge, by abstaining when the kids are in the car (I'd rather talk to them, anyway), and yakking, and even typing, when they're not? I'd like to say I am above such inconsistency. But then I'd be claiming high ground I'm not really standing on. Is anyone in the same uneasy spot?
Photograph of mom and kids driving by Ryan McVay/Getty Images.
-
- |
-
- |
- |
- 4
Horrible coda to our conversation about texting while driving: this story about a trucker who was texting on one cell phone while talking on another, hit a car, and drove into a swimming pool. OK, so Ann and Emily are right as always, and the whole thing is totally inexusable, and yet people keep doing it, and as I confessed the other day, parents are probably doing it when their children aren't there to catch them. Which makes me think that texting while driving is the new smoking—a dangerous habit that goes underground but doesn't go away. And that leaves in its wake images of catastrophe.
-
- |
-
- |
- |
- 8
I’ll admit my bias up front: My father is a New York City cab driver, and has been for 35 years. That could be him in that stock photo on the cover of today’s scolding New York Times story, for all I know. The story chastises cabbies for talking on their cell phones and driving. Well, I’ll explain why they do. Starting with Rudolph Giuliani, New York’s mayors have imposed endless regulations on taxis. They raised the height of the window between driver and passenger, installed televisions and credit cards. The result, over the years, is to turn taxi drivers into chauffeurs. My father used to chat amiably with his passengers all day. Now he can’t hear what they say and they’re always on their cell phones or watching TV anyway. So he’s pretty bored. As it happens, he tries never to talk on his phone while driving. And I know most drivers don’t. Still, the thought of that New York Times reporter hopping around the city “politely” asking drivers to get off their phones makes me want to break his glasses.
-
- |
-
- |
- |
- 0
The federal government has obviously been reading the New York Times series (as has Double X) about the carnage resulting from the increasing incidence of texting while driving. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is going to have a summit about how to curb this flabbergasting new habit. (What's next? Do we have to have a summit to convince people not to give themselves pedicures while driving?) Hooray for the power of the press. LaHood makes the point that merely banning this practice is not enough; there has to be a societal shift in attitude. That's true, although it would be a good start for every jurisdiction to ban it, and also put in place severe penalties. Why do we have to relive the struggles we went through to criminalize drunk driving (which still kills too many people)? It's been established that texting while driving is more dangerous than getting behind the wheel after a couple of drinks.
To help bring a shift in public awareness, let's get some powerful public service campaigns going. Let's see the people with bodies wrecked by another driver's need to text, "c u there." Let's see the young family whose mother or father will never come home. And perhaps most powerful of all, let's have some drivers look into the camera and say that they now have to live with the knowledge that they killed someone while texting.
Photograph of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood by Win McNamee/Getty Images.
