Hang Up And Drive

In the past several weeks, there has been two incidents of cars being struck by trains in my area. In one case, a car was trapped between the crossing guards in traffic and the woman driving apparently didn’t know what to do. Her two sons were killed when they were thrown from the vehicle. It’s hard to know if they would have been saved had they been wearing seat belts.

In the second case, a young mother was using her cell phone and drove through a lowered crossing guard and was struck by a train. She and her young son was killed, and her infant daughter survived. Again, the boy was apparently not wearing a seat belt. But the major cause of the accident was her use of the cell phone which was captured on the train’s video camera. It is hard to argue that the distraction of the cell phone contributed to two deaths.

In both of these cases, ignoring common sense safety precautions ended up in tragedy. And I can’t help but wonder what it will take until the general public gets the message and begins to pay attention to these events. Unfortunately, too many of us feel that these kinds of things only happen to other people.

Many times, while waiting for a traffic light to change, I have counted the number of cars going by where the driver was talking on a cell phone. Not the ones using ear-buds, or other hands-free devices…because you can’t easily tell when they’re being used…but drivers holding cell phones to their ear. Almost always, more than 50% of the vehicles were driven by chatty drivers. I’ve often wondered what it is that all those people are talking about that is so important. How did we ever survive 15 or 20 years ago when cell phones were not that common?

I rarely talk on the phone while driving. And when I do, I use a bluetooth head set. And if I make the call, I only use the phone if I am able to connect with voice commands. If I can’t get the phone to respond with voice commands I wait until I stop and place the call. I had one too many close calls trying to drive and dial. In other words, I wised up.

There is a woman in my neighborhood who drives a big white SUV. I have seen this woman driving past my home for probably two or three years. I have yet to see her go past without the cell phone pressed against her ear. I have even seen her walk out of her house, get into her car and never stop talking on the phone. How in the world do you spend that much time on a cell phone?

The problem with using a cell phone while driving is that attention is diverted from operating the vehicle. Usually, this is because hearing the conversation is not all that easy with the noise of the car, traffic sounds, etc., competing with the sounds coming through the ear piece. There are other things that happen when a person is engrossed in that conversation while holding the communication device: turn signals aren’t used, speed is irregular (speed up, slow down, etc.), erratic movements in traffic happen because peripheral vision is blocked by the occupied hand beside the face, and people slam on their brakes because they finally spot the car stopped in front of them. Or worse, they don’t see the car stopped in front of them until they hit it.

My wishing that people would hang up and drive is not going to make it happen. No more than my wishing every parent would strap their kids in when they put them in the car. But maybe we can start a movement to use peer pressure to make a difference. Schools are starting to do it, and in some cases there has been some improvement in teens helping to change their peer’s behavior.

Until then, if you’re driving your car and talking on the cell phone and hear someone honking, it’s me. Hopefully, when you hear the horn it will remind you to hang up and drive!

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