Cell Phones and Their Relationship to Auto Accidents

When I was asked to write about the correlation between cell phones and auto accidents, one of the statistics that I was given was that approximately 21% of all accidents involving teens between the ages of 16 and 19 involved the use of cell phones. The request went on to state that I should suggest my advice to novice drivers and provide tips for parents who are teaching their teens about driving safety, and that I could show what I know about preventing similar accidents and how I informed my friends and family about these increasing tragedies.

Bill Cosby, the world famous, legendary comedian who also holds a Ph.D. in Education did a monologue some years ago where he hypothesized that all children were brain damaged. As evidence of this theory he pointed out many commonalities between the actions of children dating from contemporary life back to the very beginnings of the bible when Adam and Eve, the first children of G-d, were placed in the Garden of Eden. Cosby pointed out that when Adam and Eve were asked to watch over the garden they really didn't have much to do. They didn't have to mow the lawn. They didn't have to pick up garbage and old chicken bones. They didn't have to dress for dinner. Basically, the one thing that G-d was pretty adamant about was not eating from the tree that bore the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. As long as they didn't eat that fruit, everything was fine. There was not a whole lot of brainwork involved in the job that was given to the first two sentient children. So, it is not hard to understand, even after as many as 6000 years, why it was that G-d, the supreme being, from everlasting to everlasting, became so exasperated when, upon looking for Adam and Eve after a brief distraction, he found the two of them hiding their nakedness which was a sure sign that they had done exactly the one simple thing that they had been told not to do - not to eat the apples. So exasperated was G-d that he basically said, "I gave you one instruction not to do one simple thing, and the minute I turn my back, that is the one thing you manage to accomplish! Get your stuff, and get out! Don't even think about coming back either!"

What I'm getting at, and the point that Cosby was making, was that young minds, although they seem to be operating on all of the cylinders, so to speak, are often times so underdeveloped, or distracted, or inefficient, or, well, brain damaged until they reach the age of say thirty, that they don't have enough of the common tools of logic, enough of the common sense that the Creator gave to a pickle, the stuffs that are required to reason that they should not attempt to use a complicated communication device while hurtling down an asphalt ribbon at the speed of, of, anything! It just doesn't occur to them. It doesn't occur to them that this is a bad idea even after hearing about peers their age who have been recently killed for engaging in the same activity.

Now, here's the rub. It seems that this brain damage is somewhat contagious. Perhaps it is "retro-hereditary". It seems, in many cases, to go back up the evolutionary tree of human lineage. I derive my hypothesis from the fact that 90% of the mush brained little "teeny wreckers" wrecking their teeny little brain buckets on the highways and byways of this great land of ours are doing so whilst grasping hold of, and speaking with blind abandonment through, cell phones that were provided to them by none other than their very own "old enough to know far better than to give a kid a cell phone and the keys to a car" parents. These are parents whom, unless they were hatched from alien pods from the Mongo galaxy (even those pod parents are not exempt either) should have better sense - especially given the fact that they them selves were as young and undeniably dumb as their careening squawky spawn who pose the great danger that threatens every driver in the world today.

And yet (forget about the grammar, I'm on a roll), logic, history, better judgment, and the fact that one plus one equal two ones be damned, it is these defaulted stewards of our contemporary society, and, dare I say, in many cases the more financially capable breeders who have been allowed to pepper the fragile footholds our species call communities with their progeny, who have happily given the tools of destruction to the teens in question. But I digress.

This article was to be about my experience with cell phones and their relationship to auto accidents. To that end, let me present the following notions. I speak to the youth of America and the members of my peer group who constitute the immediate ancestry of the future of our kind. Here are eleven random guidelines that you might be surprised to learn and would be wise to follow: 1.) It is a bad idea to jump on a thin board with four wheels fastened to it and purposely travel upon it downhill at the highest rate of speed achievable without the slightest idea of how you are going to stop or avoid motorized metal projectiles the size of elephants. 2.) Given the fact that 4 alcoholic beverages consumed in a one hour period will make the average sized human intoxicated and seriously affect that human's judgment, coordination, and the ability to safely control a motorized metal projectile like the one just described, it is not a good idea to forcibly consume 4 to 10 times that amount before doing exactly what has just been described. 3.) It is a bad idea to have a friend hit you in the head with an average pickaxe. 4.) Don't eat your dog's excretion. 5.)Don't fight with trains. 6.) Don't drink pure sulfuric acid. 7.) Avoid sitting on the point of a javelin. 8.) Discourage friends from gouging out your eyeballs with knitting needles. 9) Don't enter the cages of big wild cats and bears while visiting the zoo. 10.) Don't try to talk on a cell phone while careening down the road in a 3 ton metal projectile at 55 miles per hour, you flipping brain dead idiot. 11.) Don't act surprised when you get called an idiot given the statistical probability that you are one according to history. Just heed the wisdom being freely offered to you, and, for G-d's sake - think!