Texting and Talking While Driving

[shatto]

Driving and Texting or Talking,
my response to a newspaper column:

Mr. Roadshow.

Your Happy New Year column featured your number one wish
as being the raising of fines for using a handheld cellphone
while driving.

The Sacramento crowd are having a field-day coming up
with laws to keep people from texting and talking while
motoring, while auto manufacturers come up with ways for
drivers to do just that.

Having driven over a million miles as a courier qualifies me
to opine;

* Talking on a phone, or radio, can cause the process of
driving to become subconscious, meaning that the driver
becomes totally unaware of what is going on consciously,
something that can unnerve even a professional whose
workplace is the drivers seat.

* Texting, I suppose, can be done by touch and maybe even
single handed but, what about that pesky steering wheel?
And I reckon texters have the same loss of focus as talkers.

* There are drivers, like professionals, with legitimate
reasons to be talking while driving. I found those chats to be
irritating and terse because neither my dispatcher nor I
wanted to be talking.

The point is that there is a reason for some talk while
driving but damn little.

Michael Shatto
Concord, California