Life Between 0 and 1

It’s just under two hours until its illegal to text while driving in Pennsylvania.  The new law, which takes effect March 8th, authorizes law enforcement to pull people over and ticket them if they’re observed texting while operating a vehicle.  Of course me being a techy and geek, I know better and have learned that while driving, “it can wait” unless its a call.  My wife knows that if its an emergency and knows I might be driving to ring once, hang up, then immediately call again.

Commuting over 50 miles for almost 10 years combined now, I’ve seen a lot of other things besides texting that should have been ticketed.  Wheres a cop when you need one?

Ok, here they are, in no particular order:

• 

  Reading the newspaper while driving 70mph on the highway

• Putting on makeup (weaving all over the place too)
• Changing clothing….  observing the driving while changing pants made me back off
• Eating any number of various items normally thought of as not “easy” to eat while driving
• Having a fight on the phone
• Performing a Chinese fire drill reminiscent of some action movies, “here, take the wheel”
• Taking pictures with an SLR of people allegedly tail gating behind them

It truly is amazing to me that there aren’t more accidents based on the way that people drive normally.  I mean, there must be a majority of good drivers that avoid the bad drivers on a regular basis so accidents are narrowly avoided.  In my older wiser age I’ve adopted a smarter driving style and only have rare fits of “get the hell out of my way” types of road rage.  They are fortunately or unfortunately (depending on how you look at it) becoming less frequent.  My wife approves!

At this point I see a lot of other states adopting “No Texting” laws to help protect all the drivers out there.  I for one wouldn’t mind seeing a few choice punk teenagers taken to the wringer and getting tickets they seriously can’t afford.  Now I need to figure out when I became old enough to dislike teenagers instead of thinking I still was cool enough to be one…..