Wednesday Rant; Texting

Is THIS who you want behind while you are trying to ride home and take your kids out for ice cream?




It's been a while, right? I have been curbing my desire to use the blog as a pulpit lately, mostly because I have been busy as hell. Today...I have some time to catch up. Although a number of things are currently chapping my ass, I'm gonna' start with the most ass-chapping, and see how far I get.


TEXTING




Put that f******g thing down for a few minutes and pay attention. You aren't that good at driving, or even walking to use it at the same time. I saw a girl yesterday in a Honda Accord come INCHES away from wiping out four pedestrians and two cars because she had to text while she was driving to the mall...with her knees. I don't know what she was sending, but it wasn't worth their lives I assure you.

The data available for car accidents involving cell phone use is limited. The information I have here are the most current 2007 and 2008 statistics regarding cell phone usage and text messaging during car accidents. What is clear is that talking on the phone and texting behind the wheel both lead to distraction, and driver inattention is the leading cause of car accidents.

Teen Driver Cell Phone and Text Messaging Statistics
Despite the risks, the majority of teen drivers ignore cell phone driving restrictions.

In 2007, driver distractions, such as using a cell phone or text messaging, contributed to nearly 1,000 crashes involving 16- and 17-year-old drivers.

Over 60 percent of American teens admit to risky driving, and nearly half of those that admit to risky driving also admit to text messaging behind the wheel.

Each year, 21% of fatal car crashes involving teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 were the result of cell useage/texting while driving. This result has been expected to grow as much as 4% every year.

Almost 50% of all drivers between the ages of 18 and 24 are texting while driving.

Over one-third of all young drivers, ages 24 and under, are texting on the road.

Teens say that texting is their number one driver distraction.



**Better ride straight, this is behind you in the height of Serbo-Croatian technology, the YUGO, doing 65 mph and HAS to tell "Raven" about the new purple hair dye at Hot Topic.**

One-fifth of experienced adult drivers in the United States send text messages while driving.

A study conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Motorists found that motorists who use cell phones to text or talk while driving are four times more likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves.

In 2002, the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis calculated that 2,600 people die each year as a result of using cellphones while driving. They estimated that another 330,000 are injured.

According to the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, drivers talking on cell phones are 18 percent slower to react to brake lights. They also take 17 percent longer to regain the speed they lost when they braked.

The Transportation Safety Group at the National Safety Council found that distracted drivers account for nearly 80 percent of car crashes.

Without concrete data to go on, researchers such as Steven Yantis, a cognitive psychologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, ventured a guess.

"Common sense would tell me that (texting) would be worse because you have to look away from the road," he said.

Yantis is an expert in multitasking. His research has centered on what happens in the brain when people try to pay attention to multiple sources of information. Yantis hasn't directly researched the effects of multitasking while driving, but the bottom line is this: When attention shifts toward one area, it drifts away from another.

"Most people think they're better at multitasking than they really are, and that's because most of the time, errors have no consequences," he said. "When you're driving, even half a second of distraction could, at the right circumstances, have disastrous consequences."



**Let's see..no helmet, no brakes, and texting...well played.**

Just ask Patrick Sims. In 2005, the then 17-year-old Colorado resident struck and killed a bicyclist while tending to a text message. His sentence included nine days in jail and 300 hours of community service to be spent telling others his story.

"That day, that text message seemed important to me," Sims told The Denver Post. "Now I couldn't even tell you what it said."

That same year, a 26-year-old Tennessee man died after he reportedly lost control of his truck while trying to send a text message.

Proving that walking and texting don't mix, Staten Island 15-year-old Alexa Longueira recently found herself four feet under -- in a manhole. The teen had been sending a text message when she walked right into an uncovered manhole.

"It was four or five feet, it was very painful," Longueria told the Staten Island Advance. "I kind of crawled out and the DEP guys came running and helped me. They were just, like, 'I'm sorry! I'm sorry!'"

Longueira was taken to a local hospital and treated for cuts and scrapes, while the Department of Environmental Protection was left scrambling for an explanation. Local workers had turned their backs to get orange cones to mark the manhole when Longueira fell in.Of course, there's a lawsuit in the works -- apparently mostly because of the smell.

"Oh my God, it was putrid," says Longueria's mom, Kim. "One of her sneakers is still down there." But as for the walking and texting, Longueria's mom seems to think that's beside the point -- instead, she blames the workers who left the site unattended.



TAMPA, Fla., May 25 (UPI) -- Police in Tampa, Fla., said a hooky-playing high school student rear-ended a police cruiser because she allegedly was text messaging while driving.
Katelyn Blaylock, 18, of Lutz, Fla., told Tampa police that she rear-ended Officer Tanya Manning's police cruiser at a red light Wednesday because she was distracted by texting, the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune reported Monday.

Blaylock and a passenger riding in the front seat of her car were treated for minor injuries caused when the car's airbags deployed. Manning was not injured.

Police said Blaylock and two passengers in her car were students who should have been at Freedom High School in Tampa at the time of the collision.


I could ramble on, grab more samples, gather more data, but I think you get you the idea. Falling into a manhole? In New York? Because you had your head up your ass? Killing your friends? Please just drive alone and fly off a cliff in the woods somewhere first, and don't take anyone with you, ok? Poor Charles Darwin, his theory is being blown to hell because we let these people live...


These two dipshits are probably texting each other.

OK, that's all for today. Now fire up those Blackberries and get to texting the person you love....

..who is next to you at the dinner table...

...dumb ass.