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There’s a story about a truck driver who passed the long, lonely hours in his big rig knitting sweaters. His hands thus otherwise occupied, he steered with his knees. A highway patrol officer noted this behavior and set out after the truck driver. As the cop got close, he commanded via his vehicle’s loudspeaker, “Pull over.” To which the trucker shouted back, “No, it’s a cardigan.”
Though not a bona fide law-enforcement officer myself, I sometimes act in loco centurion while on the road. I do this by sharing safety tips with distracted motorists, such as “Slow down!” or “Pick a lane!” or, my go-to line, “Get off the phone!”
My most recent public safety effort happened in mid-December, in sunny Florida. I was driving south on the fabled A1A, just up the coast from Fort Lauderdale. In front of me was a young man on a motor scooter, doing about 35 miles per hour. Suddenly he slowed, causing me to do likewise. With his speed now erratically dancing around 20 mph, I swung left to pass. A cursory glance revealed that the scooter rider had slowed so he could concentrate on the task at hand: texting.
Scooter boy held his smartphone in both hands and banged out keystrokes with his thumbs, which against all odds were opposable. Wow, I thought, a new champion. My previous all-time winner was a woman in Boston a few years back who had no choice but to use her knees and elbows to more or less guide her vehicle’s trajectory along Storrow Drive, because her hands were busy holding the phone and writing notes recording key aspects of the conversation. I had an excellent view of her activities when she got close enough to the car in which I was a passenger for me to gently bang on her window.
But the guy on the scooter couldn’t even knee-steer. True, the gyroscopic effect of the scooter’s spinning wheels might keep him upright temporarily as he tooled along the roadway, hair flowing in the wind—did I mention that he wore no helmet?—perhaps tweeting to his followers about his derring-do.
As fate would have it, about half a mile later I had to stop for a red light and the scooter, with rider still somehow perched atop it, pulled up to my left. Feeling the necessity to share important public health information with him, I lowered my window and shouted a friendly, “Hey.” Seeing that I sought collegial banter, he said, “Huh?” I started to tell him the literally vital news I had, when he said, “Wait.” At which point he removed the earbuds that were conveying selections from his smartphone’s music library directly to the interior of his helmetless head and drowning out ambient sounds, such as engine noises, car horns and other useful clues to the environment.
“Listen,” I began, in vain hope of getting through to a brain that clearly held itself in low regard, “just please sign your organ donor card.” He looked at me quizzically. “If you sign your donor card,” I explained, “at least when they come to wipe you off the road, your organs might save some other people’s lives.” The light turned green, the dim bulb returned to his multitasking, and I thought of the desperate people waiting for a kidney, a liver, a heart and sundry other body parts whose prayers might soon be answered, all thanks to me. And, of course, to texting while scootering.
Numerous studies have shown that a sober driver becomes as erratic as an intoxicated one when merely holding and talking on a phone—the chances of an accident more than quadruple. Researchers have only recently embarked on studies of texting’s degradation of driving skills, presumably because it never occurred to them that people would be that amazingly daft. Early results indicate that texting is even worse than handheld phone talking. So remember, don’t phone and drive, don’t fool with the MP3 player and drive, don’t drink and text—seriously, your ex really doesn’t want to hear from you—and definitely don’t text and drive. But if for some unfathomable reason, you absolutely cannot resist the urge to compose short and banal messages instead of paying attention to the road, at least sign your organ donor card. Then upon receiving your remains, transplant surgeons can echo the trucker and say, “It’s a card again.”
This article was originally published with the title Scooting toward Oblivion.
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13 Comments
Add CommentEver heard of the Darwin awards?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would be nice if we had a national number for calling in aggressive drivers and another one for distracted drivers. They are hard to identify by police because it takes some time to observe them before identifying their behavior. Motorists are in the best position to do this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks Steve , on "Scooting toward Oblivion" a donor with no chin , but that is not what is needed. Oh , and thanks for not being connected with law-enforcement . The wit / intelligence would be wasted , sure a quality one here and there but not normally. Do you care to hear a story? This is not actually for publication although Americans need to know . Maybe later after we all get educated how it works
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is a link to a video made by the Gwent police, in Wales a country within the United Kingdom. It was made to show in schools. It does make the point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC3x7K3EOTk
At least the guy on the scooter probably wasn't going to hurt anyone else when he became a road pizza.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI once saw someone with a plate of eggs (over easy), bacon and toast on their lap with a fork in hand while driving. That's quite a skill.
There's no excuse for this kind of distracted driving.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe scooter could have caused any kind of deadly or mutilating accident.
And, don't forget, when scooter sees someone doing the same thing, he loudly proclaims they're a nuisance to society. It's the "above average" principle in sociology. Everyone believes they are above average in terms of tasks compared to everyone else. If you stopped everyone on a highway and asked, every single one would say they're a better driver than every other one there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe fact is, laws do nothing more than generate revenue for States in the form of fines. I'm in favor of keeping them, mind you, but the reality is things are only going to improve when we have fully autonomous vehicles that do the work of driving while we do the things we need to do. Ford promises a fully autonomous vehicle by 2018, which isn't too unfair an assessment. Every competitor finished the Darpa challenge last year, a first, I believe. Lexus has a car that parks itself, Mercedes takes care of the brakes when you're not paying attention. Within 10 years, we'll have some people in robot cars, it needs to be mandatory within 20. That's stated as someone who loves to drive, but understands my freedoms shouldn't come at the cost of everyone else's.
Great article, great comments, and now to needle the author for his shameless puns, he needs a good ribbing, can we get this on cable TV, may we all learn from your purls of wisdom, and at least the truck driver was a knitter and not a hooker. You sure know how to spin a good yarn!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLol ill make sure to Sign my card
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat was a well staged punch line.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat video linked above by forlornehope is disturbingly real looking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's another that doesn't involve an accident though, if it is real and not faked, (and how can one know for sure these days), the guy is probably dead by now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxZxjgKcsPE
Smooth, very smooth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree, as I'm sure many people would, with the stance the author has taken in this article. People need to pay more attention to actually driving when they drive, no matter how big or small the vehicle. The comedic story was a nice approach to getting the message out there, and it was nice that it didn't just involve texting and talking on the phone. With the new law that has been passed recently making texting while driving illegal, a lot of the public's focus has been directed towards just that when there are many other wildly ridiculous acts someone could be pulling while behind the wheel. The article touches upon studies showing that using a phone while driving can be comparable to driving drunk, but what about knitting while driving or, as one reader noted, eating while driving? How bad do those results get? There should be a law that states any person is to have at least one hand and no knees on the steering wheel at all times. That should one-up the no texting law and put more of a stop to a lot of the ridiculous tasks people think they can easily do while driving.
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