Drivers: Please Slow Down To Text
. . . because, then it’s really quite safe to do so. And I’m sure that you can hold your phone in a hand that’s resting on top of the steering wheel, so that you can keep an eye on the road ahead AND on the text message you’re composing or reading.
Or at least that’s what Philippa Curtis, of Suffolk seemed to be claiming as the defendant in a case at Oxford Crown Court. She’s standing trial, after her car struck Victoria McBryde’s broken down vehicle while she was texting at 70mph. Ms McBryde suffered a fatal brain injury.
Even though the evidence of her own experience that texting while driving (texting+driving=dead person) is a stupid, inconsiderate, dangerous thing to do, Phillipa Curtis still told the court that
she could send and receive messages without taking her eyes off the road
Yes, and drunk drivers can also sit behind the wheel, staring glassy-eyed at the road ahead. But scarily enough, they’re less likely to crash than someone who’s trying to compose a 160-character message.
Workout:
- Type: Cycle
- Date: 12/18/2008
- Total Time: 1:13:00.00
- Calories: 951
- Distance: 18 miles
- Average Speed: 14.79 mph
Carlton Reid (twitter: @carltonreid) has just pointed me at Tom Vanderbilt’s line on this story:
“Her eyes, perhaps, but her mind? Alas, not.”
Also worth mentioning is one of Tom Vanderbilt’s original pieces on in car distraction;
http://www.howwedrive.com/2008/10/28/debugging/
It makes the apparent drive (no pun intended) to turn the car into some sort of mobile entertainment/communication centre all the harder to understand, imo.
[...] Phillippa Curtis, the 21 year-old who sent 20 text messages and made a bunch of phone calls before hitting a [...]