My province of Ontario in Canada is looking to restrict the use of cellphones in automobiles that are in motion and I fully applaud the move. I cringe every time I see a driver come whippin’ around a corner with a thin metal communication device plastered to the side of his or her face.
But there are a dozen other distractions for drivers from eating a full fast-food meal spread out on their lap, to applying makeup, to text messaging, to carrying on a marriage-ending spat with a spouse.
And then there’s smoking. As one who puffed away for almost 20 years on a pack a day before giving up the addiction in the mid ’80s, I can freely admit that the habit did not improve my driving ability. Every car I ever had ended up eventually with a lovely hole in the upholstery of the driver’s seat. This was the result of the occasional cigarette tumbling from my fingers or lips and landing between my legs on the seat below. Inevitably, it would roll out of sight.
If yakking to a friend or client on a phone is a distraction, imagine driving along with a burning butt under your burning butt.
Fortunately, for everyone involved, cigarettes weren’t responsible for the few accidents I’ve been involved in over the years but I shouldn’t joke about it. It is a very serious matter.
Maybe drivers should be banned from doing anything but driving when we’re behind the wheel but as long as auto manufacturers are allowed to design interiors that are more homey and appealing than the insides of some of our homes, we are going to play while we steer. DVD screens front and back, GPS, full stereo systems powered by MP3s.
How long before there are wireless mini laptop computers set into our dashboards?
I read recently that all this splashy technology in cars, homes and offices is reducing our ability to concentrate on anything for any length of time and I believe it’s true. Twenty years ago, I could sit for an hour in a coffee shop with a newspaper; now I gulp down what I order and flee as though on my way to a fire.
Since Alexander Graham Bell sent a few words down the first telephone wire in the late 1800s, we’ve had a love-hate relationship with our phones. We love the convenience of them but hate how they allow peddlers into our homes at all hours. We love being a call away from emergency help but hate when callers take us away from our favourite TV shows. Most of all, we detest the rudeness of some telephone users, whether cell, cordless or landline.
Thirty years ago, when I worked at another paper, the chain we belonged to brought in an expert on telephone etiquette so we could better attract and keep customers. I don’t remember most of the tips but since then I’ve tried to live by this one: When you are talking to someone in your office and your phone rings, ignore it. If you answer it, you’re telling the person sitting in front of you that this other person who just rang is more important to you. And if you talk for any length of time, you’re just plain being incredibly ignorant.
A guy I worked with at yet another paper years ago used to call me into his office and take those phone calls while I sat there. I might not have minded if he and his caller talked business but they’d rattle on about how the Toronto Blue Jays had done the night before and discuss personal family stuff I didn’t want to know.
I used to get up and walk out. Maybe I was offended or maybe that short attention span thing was already setting in.
Go Ontario! Ban the phone, the food, the movies, the music, the makeup, the magazines, the novels (yes, some drivers read while they drive). Just as our atmosphere has been polluted, so have our lives. Good things are good at the right time and place and in the right quantities. We need water to live but water can also kill us if we fall off a ship into it.
If a phone ban saves one life, that would be well worth a call home about. From a cellphone. In a parked car.
©2008 Jim Hagarty
