Distracted Driving

One time, many, many years ago, I was working at a job and was about to get off from work. One of my co-workers was a young lady who had recently come to the U.S. and was very proud of having just purchased a car. She offered to give me, along with two other co-workers, rides home at the end of the day, doubtless to proudly show off to us her car. The problem was that, once we were on the road, we found out that she had an altogether different conception of the act of driving than the rest of us! Not only did she repeatedly and recklessly switch lanes, but she actually once went into the opposing lane to pass cars that were backed up in her own. I kept waiting for the big crash that (very) fortunately never came. This was my first true thrill ride experience. Another thing that this well-meaning driver did was endlessly fiddle around with the radio, completely taking her attention off the road to do so.

Back then (in 1980), this would have been called "reckless driving", but within the past few years, I've noticed that people seem to be driving around more and more like this. Not only do drivers manifest their immense impatience on the road with constant lane-switching, but they, taken as a whole, seem to be much more distracted with things besides actually looking where they're going. Cell phones, CDs, MP3s, radio, food, drink, passengers, even DVDs and reading are becoming increasingly pervasive distractions to driving. While driving, I'm continuously running across situations where I know that, if I had not been fully concentrating on where I was going, then I would have had an accident. Driving distracted presumes that others will behave appropriately. But if a pedestrian or bicyclist suddenly enters the field of traffic in front or you, then you'd better see it instantly and react instinctively. Personally, seeing how bad things have gotten, I'm not all that enthusiastic about resuming my old bicycling hobby. I've seen too many distracted drivers in front of me weaving off and on the road. To them, the bike path running parallel to the street is just some extra space for them to be able to drive through so that they can pay more attention to their "toys".