(the reply is uncertain, and the end is always near)
Regular readers of TRM will know that it doesn’t take all that much to make my head want to explode. But I hope you’ll believe me, and so indulge me, when I say that last week’s Anya Sostek article about the brain-dead, solipsistic idiots who insist on text-messaging while driving made my cranium swell almost to Barry-Bondsian proportions.
That they do it — in the face of logic and reason and that increasingly rare commodity known as common sense — is bad enough. That they rationalize it after the fact with a mix of moral relativism and unfettered id that would make a drunken frat boy, or maybe even Britney Spears, blush — is worse. And far more disturbing.
I wanted to write about these miscreants last Thursday — oh boy, did I — but couldn't find the time. Today, I found it.
First, let's start with some context:
Half of adolescents send text messages while driving, according to a study released this week from the National Center for Children in Poverty.
Which means, of course, that the drivers who most need to pay attention to what they’re doing — the ones with the least physical practice and accumulated experience on the road — are those paying the least attention. This alone should be enough to frighten you off the road for a while. And then you read this...
Other studies have pegged the percentage of all drivers who text at nearly 25 percent.
...which may be enough to frighten me off the roads forever.
Because, in other words: when it comes to texting-and-driving, the population as a whole, from ages 20 to death, is only about half-again as wise, as careful, as thoughtful and responsible behind the wheel as teenagers.
Here’s Exhibit A...
"It's so stupid," said Noah Caplan, 32, describing the practice that he does roughly "every single time I'm in my car."
On Thursday, I suggested this behavior is a kind of insanity. I could still make that case — the folly, the senselessness, the derangement are all acute enough to make it stick — but the more I think about, the more I think this behavior is really just a form of abject and willful stupidity.
The insane do not recognize their own insanity, and the ignorant do not recognize their own ignorance. People who acknowledge their own pathology, and then proceed apace as if they alone possess some special immunity, leave us with but two suitable descriptors: recklessness and stupidity.
Unless, of course, there’s some truly compelling reason for the behavior.
Though he knows texting while driving is dangerous, it's also irresistibly convenient, he said, explaining that friends and co-workers who text him want to hear back right away and that a text message is far more efficient than a phone call.
Like, say, convenience. Or the impatience of friends whose every digital squawk and croak must be acknowledged, lest they fear the social has left their media.
"Our generation is so hooked on instant gratification," he said. "Ninety-nine percent of the time, it's something that can wait. I shouldn't even pay attention to it."
And yet he does. Over and over again. At great risk to himself and to everyone else on the road with him.
Because the pull is too great to be ignored. The satisfaction too near to be delayed. The sense of self too bloated and raging ever to be denied.
That study found that drivers in the midst of writing a text message spent 4.6 seconds out of every six seconds with their eyes off the road -- the equivalent of a length of a football field while traveling at 55 mph.
In other words: when texters’ fingers are flying, their eyes are off the road and on the screen 77% of the time. That sure sounds safe to me!
Holly Glymour, a 25-year-old law student at the University of Pittsburgh, admits to regularly talking on a cell phone while driving. But texting while driving?
"It scares me," she said. "I think it's a lot more likely that I'll get in an accident."
Well, what do you know? Finally someone with sense.
Sort of.
Still, she understands the temptation. Friends who text her expect an instant response, she said, with no allowance for other priorities. "If you don't answer people within two minutes, they send me more texts," she said. "If they don't hear back, they'll freak out and call me."
Here’s a thought for Ms. Glymour and everyone else: if your friends expect you to respond within two minutes every time they flatulate a thought, and if they do not respect your priorities, your boundaries, or even your life enough to let you live them, it might be time to get some new friends.
Of course, if you don’t respect your own priorities, your own boundaries, or your own life enough to let those alleged friends wait just a few minutes every now and again, how can you expect them to do it?
Web programmer Andy Cherep, 31, used to text with wild abandon. But nine months ago, after the birth of his son, he decided that risking his life to text was no longer worth it,...
Read that again. Carefully.
Mr. Cherep decided that risking his life was no longer worth it.
Which means that until he was at least 30 years old, he thought so little of his own life, or the lives of his passengers, or the lives of all the other drivers on the road around him, that he was willing to risk them all just so he could respond to the inane bleatings and blatherings of the instant gratification set.
...particularly given that the stylus that he uses to text on his phone makes it a two-hand operation.
Which means, of course, that unless my math is wrong — or unless Mr. Cherep has an extra appendage or two — he had zero hands actually, you know, gripping the wheel.
So now he only texts at red lights.
Well, I’m sure that’s working out well.
Or not.
It's a practice that is also not foolproof, he learned recently when he had "more than a close call." While texting at a red light in Green Tree, he bumped the car in front of him -- resulting in an exchange of insurance information but not in any damage.
First: what was he doing, texting with his feet?
Next: what better evidence could we have that drivers can not successfully text and drive at the same time than an accident that proves they can not even text and idle at the same time?
If you’re distracted enough by texting to have an accident WHEN YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE MOVING, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet you’re distracted enough to have one when you’re doing 75 on the parkway. Or 35 on Shady Avenue.
Whether any amount of texting should be allowed is an issue that has conflicted Pennsylvania legislators. Many legislators recognize the danger that hand-held cell phones and other distractions can pose for motorists, but there is a strong reluctance to impose "nanny government" on citizens.
You know, I see their point. I think we should stop all of this nanny government sort of legislation. If people want to text-and-drive, why should we stop them? If they want to drink-and-drive, why should we stop them? If they want to drink-and-shoot-and-text-and-rape-and-kill-and-drive, who are we to say they can’t?
I say we get rid of all the silly laws that protect people from each other’s stupid or dangerous or sociopathic behavior.
Who needs nanny government when we can have anarchy instead?
Sitting outside Pitt's law school with Ms. Glymour, law student Joe Hirschmann is an unapologetic texter firmly opposed to a state law.
Which is to say that Mr. Hirschmann is an unapologetic narcissist who believes his own instant gratification should supersede the safety of everyone else around him.
"People who want to pass a law are in the older generation, who aren't capable of driving and texting without being distracted," he said. "I'm safer texting than a woman driving putting on makeup."
Isn’t it cute that Mr. Hirschmann thinks he knows better than the mounds and mounds of scientific data to the contrary? That he thinks he and the rest of his “younger generation” are so digitally and psychically advanced that they are capable of overcoming the long-proven limitations of their own physiology? That he recognizes the obvious danger of someone else’s behavior behind the wheel — I would say we should ban that too, but I’ve already sided with the anarchists — but can not bring himself to acknowledge the equally obvious dangers of his own behavior behind the wheel? That’s the kind of self-absorption you just can’t teach.
But I would like to know: is he safer than a man who’s driving and putting on makeup?
And besides, "it's not illegal in Pennsylvania," said Mr. Hirschmann. "Yet."
Mr. Hirschmann has a point. And not just the one on the top of his head.
Texting-and-driving is not illegal in Pennsylvania. Of course, neither is it illegal to swan dive off your roof, chop off your foot with an axe, or make a meal of your own feces. But I doubt Mr. Hirschmann will be lining up to do any of those things any time soon.
(Unless, of course, there’s an app for that, which he can use while driving. Then all bets are off.)
Repeat after me, folks: Legality does not equal sagacity.
Or, to put it another way: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
So here’s the thing: if the Noah Caplans and Joe Hirschmanns of the world insist on throwing caution to the wind and fingers to the keyboard, if they persist in texting-and-driving when they should be thinking-and-driving, or at least paying-attention-and-driving, and in the process run off the road and wreck their cars and hurt only themselves, I can live with that. If they crash and burn and kill only themselves, I won’t shed a single tear. I won’t feel bad for a moment. And I may even say a prayer of thanks.
Because the alternative is — and chances are — that when they do wreck and crash and kill because they just couldn’t wait to hunt and peck and text, it won’t be only themselves they harm.
When they engage in this foolishness — when they happily feed this insanity — they’re not just risking their own lives. They’re risking mine and yours. They’re risking the lives of our families and friends, our parents and children. They’re risking the lives people we know and love and want to keep on knowing and loving, of people we do not know and do not love but might like to someday, of people whose existence is, or at least should be, far more precious than the instant gratification of solipsistic morons who are afraid of keeping their equally moronic and solipsistic friends waiting more than a few seconds for word of how little they’re doing, and how dangerously they’re doing it.
Posted
Oct 27 2009, 10:44 AM
by
Chad