One of my kids was in New York City the other day. He was crossing the street, at a crosswalk, when a guy in a white car - a guy talking on a cell phone - stopped and unexpectedly threw the car into reverse. The guy suddenly braked, but not before the car hit my kid - hard enough to cause pain, but not hard enough to seriously hurt him. Then the guy took off.
My son came home shaking his head. If he had been standing a few feet away, in the wrong direction, the car would have hit him hard enough to slam him to the pavement.
I was reminded of that story a few days later, when I was driving along North Salina Street and a woman dropped from 30 to a dead stop, in the middle of traffic. I was far enough behind her to brake, and then to pull out and go around, but yes ... she was lost in an animated cell phone conversation. I saw that, and I thought of my kid, and I thought of the whole wave of traffic carnage we've had in the last few months, and I wondered how many times a cell phone was involved ...
And it just seems as if things have gotten utterly insane. There is no amendment to the Bill of Rights that guarantees a right to drive. It is a privilege, a wonderfully convenient yet highly dangerous privilege, that involves inherent safeguards and restrictions. Any logical person would say that punching buttons on a cell phone - whether dialing a number or sending a message to a friend - defies all common sense and puts others at risk.
But people do it, all the time.
The results will be increasingly predictable.
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