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BBC texting PSA

16th August 2009

Sorry it’s been a while. Nothing much has been going on then I saw this:

Note for the squeamish: Contains graphic images.

These people just never learn, do they? They’ve been making movies like this since, at least, I got my license and probably had live action versions before that or something. What the makers of these sort of horror flick PSAs don’t apparently remember is that teenagers (in particular) believe they are invincible and that nothing like this can happen to them. Passing retarded laws about texting while driving (as NC recently did) won’t help either because they are unenforceable. How does a cop know that you’re texting as opposed to dialing the phone? I’m not sure about the particulars of the NC law but my phone does a lot of things: is looking something up on google maps illegal? What about picking a new song? And is that also illegal on an iPod? If it is: how’s that different than changing the station on the radio?

The problem is that driving is inherently dangerous. If you can’t handle that, take public transport. Of course that’s dangerous too, so maybe you’d better just stay at home. IMO, the basic problem in the US is that they’ll give anybody that can fog a mirror a license but then want the roads to be safe and there’s a dichotomy there that can’t be resolved. You can have one or the other but not both. I happen to come down on the side of letting everybody drive who can pass a fairly rigorous exam that includes accident avoidance techniques  instead of letting somebody have a license after spending a few hours behind the wheel with a gym coach.  The time to learn how to control a skid is not while your car is about to start spinning out of control on the highway.

For instance, in the above, the girl that was doing the texting is a classic example of bad driving. What the producers apparently didn’t understand is that the driver she ran into also exhibited poor driving skills and as far as I’m concerned the third driver was the worst of the bunch. Both should have seen what was going on, anticipated,  and corrected to avoid.

(BBC News via Gizmodo)

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