Distracted Drivers

The other day the radio announced that the police in a nearby community had set out to ticket distracted drivers in an effect to bring awareness to this issue. In a mere 3 hours at 1 checkpoint they handed out 550 tickets. That is very scary.

I'm assuming the most common form of  a distracted driver these days is those who hold their cell phones to talk - which I don't get at all but I see it all the time. Now that cell phones are so tiny it's not even that convenient to hold a tiny slippery thing to your ear while trying to drive with the other. Plus, to get a wireless earpiece (i.e. bluetooth headset) is only around $70 for a decent one. Isn't $70 worth it for your safety and the safety of others? But still I see people in $50,000 + cars and they don't have a headset - it makes no sense, especially when so many cars have handsfree Bluetooth built right into the car's stereo system - now what's there excuse?  But people aren't just holding the phones to talk - they're doing worse than that - they are reading and writing text messages etc. So not only is one or more hand tied up for the phone but they aren't even looking at the road.

About 3 years ago they actually added a motor vehicle law prohibiting touching your phone while you're on the road, technically the only legal way to make a call or write a text would be to pull off the road and put your vehicle in 'park'. The part I didn't get was that we already had that rule in place - it was "driving without due care and attention". But still people don't do it, still they get in accidents and still they are so distracted that they get a $300 (not exactly sure on that amount) ticket because they didn't see the cop standing there because.... they were distracted!  It's just so crazy isn't it?

Once I was involved in a car accident that was completely not my fault and I was so convinced that the driver had a phone to his ear which is why he didn't see me when he changed lanes that I told the insurance claim adjuster to request the other driver's cell phone records to prove he was on the phone at the time of the accident - I don't know what happened with that, but suddenly my claim was processed with 100% liability to the other party. Huh.

Good thing the police and the car designers are trying to take care of us because it looks like most of us can't figure it out. I assume this is a universal problem? Yes? No?