DRIVING WHILE ON ANDROIDS

A couple of articles back I hammered people and their infernal cell phones. I must admit I am an avid cell phone user, but draw the line when driving ( most of the time ). If I get a call while driving with my wife, I will hand her the phone to answer. If I am driving alone, and a call comes in that I think is important, I sometimes answer and tell the person I am driving and will call them back shortly. I just got a new cell phone that will do that for me, when I get around to setting it up, so I really don't have a good excuse for doing that anymore.

Let's be honest about this whole thing. Cell phone use, for most of us, is clearly an addiction. We don't need to be available every single minute of the day and most of the night. We grossly overestimate our importance. It wasn't that long ago that people went for long periods of time without any means of being contacted. When I was younger, I drove all across this nation without a cell phone. If I needed to call someone I waited until I had access to a pay phone. Nowadays, I would be absolutely terrified, to think about driving to the next city, without my cell phone . Admittedly cell phones make traveling much safer if you don't use them while driving.

I just finished reading a Bloomberg News article written by Kyle Stock, Lance Lambert, and David Ingold. These guys did a fabulous article on this subject called, " Smartphones are killing Americans and nobody's counting". Their research indicates, that this problem is much larger than anyone thinks.
In their writings they cite the work of safety advocate Jennifer Smith, whose Mom was killed by a motorist that blew through a red light while talking on his cell phone. She says, that she thinks that the real number of fatalities tied to cell phone use, is at least three times what the Feds say it is.

Some of the biggest indicators, that cell phones are deadly, are in the data itself. In more than half of the fatal crashes in 2015, motorists were driving straight down the road, mowing down pedestrians, and bicyclists who share the roads with cars. Even killing pedestrians on sidewalks at an unheard of rate. Fatalities increased inordinately among motorcyclists ( up 6.2% in 2016 ) and pedestrians up 9% in same period.

Cell phone use while driving is absolutely as dangerous as driving while intoxicated. For some reason the same people that would never consider drinking and driving, will use a cell phone while driving and never give it a second thought. I will say this; and I am speaking to myself as well, using a cell phone while driving, is a totally selfish and inconsiderate act. If you are guilty of it, you need to stop doing it before you regret it. You can't un-kill someone.

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