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May 25, 2006
The Cell Phone Menance
by Jack Lee, Post Scripts...
The teenager was driving over the speed limit on a straight road when she lost control of her vehicle and struck several parked motorcycles, severely injuring a Harley rider. She admitted she was distracted while talking on the cell phone. In a recent fatal single car accident, the driver still had her cell phone clutched tightly in her hand.
I could cite a hundred of these "cell phone" encounters and no doubt you could too. That's why there was a meeting in Sacramento to hear testimony in support of a new cell phone law that would prohibit you from driving and talking on a handheld cell phone.
A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded cell phone use increased a drivers risk of a collision by a factor of four which is coincidentally about the same as driving under the influence. A study by "Hahn and Tetlock “calculate the costs of cellular phone use in vehicles to be $1.2 billion per year. About half of this $1.2 billion is attributable to the 78 estimated fatalities associated with driver use of cellular phones while the other half represents the costs associated with more minor accidents in which cell phones were a contributing factor.�
Thanks once again to a small minority of abusers, the rest of us are going to pay for their foolishness.
My Dad used to complain about too many stop signs and said a yeild sign would be far more efficient, which is true. Except for that small minority of drivers that wouldn't slow down. You know the type, if the speed limit is 55 they drive 65+, if it's 65 they drive 75+, if it says stop, they slide through it, they are always pushing the limit. Almost every law we have in the vehicle code book is a result of a small minority of selfish drivers messing it up for everyone else. I wish we could just target those drivers and get them off the road, maybe it's time for a tougher driver license exams and quicker court routes to "suspended" driving privilages? I bet our insurance rates would drop if we did that!
Posted by Melody at May 25, 2006 02:46 PM
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