There Should Be a New Ticket Category: Driving While Cellphoning (DWC)

I've finally had it with cellphone users. I was minding my business today heading toward an appointment when this 2001-02 beige Mazda decided to turn left without stopping or looking. It's a good thing that I had stopped at the intersection so I was able to watch this ballet of dimwittedness unfold. (How no one was hurt, I'll never know. But, I do have to say this does confirm my belief in a Deity who is watching out for us.

Now, I have nothing against left turns; a world with only right turns would be boring, in extremis, not to mention that you might not get home, so don't think I'm anti-turn. I'm certainly not. I am anti-idiot.

So here I am stopped at a four-way intersection -- thank goodness I was a little slow off the mark -- because this -- for want of a better word -- idiot of a driver, cellphone clapped hard to her right ear, just jumped across the intersection from the left.

The only indication I had that this was about to happen was that I was watching her body language and I saw her looking to the left so I waited and watched and voila she just jumped across the intersection without looking left, right or in any other direction.

She didn't seem to care whether there was anyone in front of her or oncoming or whatever, she just had to keep yakking on that cell of her's.

It was almost as if she was oblivious to the world around her, much like a person who has had a tad too much at the local pub.

Statistics back up this behavior. A recent AAA and similar studies by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) showed that using a cellphone while driving was like driving under the influence of a .8 blood alcohol level, enough to get you arrested in most jurisdictions.

Don't get me wrong I'm not anti-cellphone, either, I've been a cellphone user since they weighed about 3 pounds and were called bag phones nearly 20 years ago.

I'm not a newbie to the cellphone world. But, I also try to be as safe a driver as possible and I do use a Bluetooth hands-free headset for those "important" calls that people have to make to me -- they're never really important, more in the category of spam.

And I've told more than one of these callers that I was driving in heavy traffic and I promptly hung up (my wife isn't a big fan of this, but she's learned...and doesn't bother calling me unless the: The house is burning down; The cat is burning down; The couch has just walked out of the living room, or There's a house full of zombies chasing her).

In other words, I don't want to be bothered by somebody because he, she or it needs to make that "important" to call me while I'm driving.

So, getting back to the Mazda driver -- did I mention she had a child seat in the rear, no less, full of kid (we have to keep our youngsters safe, even if their own Mommies are the idiots) -- no doubt discussing the pressing problems of mankind and, who knows, solving them, all the while paying no attention to anything but that small box seemingly clamped to her head, not even the tandem axle pickup to her right (my left) and the import minivan whose path she cut across (the minivan was rolling, too).

Unfortunately, unless she was written up for failure to have her vehicle under control, there was little anyone can do about it. Seriously, we need a law that covers Driving While Cellphoning with a big fine and maybe community service, especially if you are a Mom, and have a kid in a child seat in the rear as this driver did.

I know I'm dreaming when I wish for this law as it likely won't pass as too many people -- including state legislators -- use cellphones while driving, and, no matter how stupidly they act, it won't pass.

If it did pass, it's likely that the old saw about never having a policeman around when you need one would become real as very few folks would be written up, so the statute would likely be a paper tiger, unless, of course, there were some horrific accident where a cellphone was involved and where people were seriously injured or worse.

Thank heaven there was no accident or I'd have probably been out there helping to pick up the pieces -- I've done that more than once in a long driving career -- and I really wasn't in the mood to do it.

This is something that's really an epidemic. It's as if whole generation has grown up around the idea that small electronic devices are harmless (like kids who play with guns and just don't realize that when they pull a trigger on a 9 mm automatic, the person they hit won't get up again because there's no reset anywhere the person who is hit and bleeding is down and that's it. It's like electronics have distorted a generation into viewing all of life as an electronic game).

I have some news for you folks with this attitude poorly driven cars kill and maim people, not to mention messing up your new haircut and really wrecking your day.

I've seen my share of serious accidents where young and old drivers were scraped off the pavement and they were without using cellphones.

Now, after seeing this display of idiocy, all I can say is it will get worse before it gets better and it may take legislation to keep things on the road safe.

There have been accidents in the recent past in which cellphones have been found to have had an influence and I can see why. If everyone drives the way that person in the intersection did there will be a pandemic of serious accidents and and fatalities, all because people just have to make or take that "important" call.

How did we survive before the cellphone? I seem to remember a whole series of roadside phone boxes that handled phone chores before the invention of the key piece of hardware that hangs from so many belts. We all stopped, at one time or another, to use these roadside miracle boxes and we were safer.

Yes, it was an inconvenience and heaven forbid that we inconvenience drivers like the one in the Mazda. They are "masters of their universes" -- they are important and they know it and so we just have to make allowance for it. Unfortunately, the reality is far different. The world neither knows nor really cares about such "important" people. Their Moms do as do their Dads and siblings, of course, but that's about it.

All I know is something has to be done and maybe the answer is just this simple passing and enforcing a new statute: "Driving While Cellphoning."

Where's the petition, I'm ready to sign!!!