Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 26, 2017

Realit bites

As someone who has been nearly run down twice by drivers with phones glued to their ears, I can say PUT IT DOWN for good reason.

I used to be a delivery-driver, and I lost count of the number of idiots I’ve seen texting while driving. Using both hands and looking at their phone instead of the road ahead, even while moving.

I had some close calls myself. You can’t talk on the phone, you can’t eat or do anything else but drive a car. Anything you do that is active will kill you. Passive works like radio listening.

Hands free phone conversations are also a distraction. There is no phone call worth risking your life and the lives of those around you.

Good Girl, Danae…

To re-quote Kenny Rogers.There’ll be time enough for Textin’When the Driven’s done.

Just like the habit I picked up…quitting smoking (at 12).

Hey, Danae wasn’t driving. Nothing wrong with twitting as a passenger.

Texting drivers is one of the reasons I stopped driving a motorcycle. Legalizing the use of recreational marijuana contributed as well.

This wasn’t preachy at all.

“She blew her mind out in a car – she didn’t notice that the lights had changed”…. Too busy texting her friends that she was at the lights.

As I was standing in my yard talking with my neighbor we saw a car going down the road flip and roll several times over before landing upside down in a 6 ft ditch. We thought she must be dead but her seat belt saved the girl (she was only badly shaken up) and it turns out she was texting, looked up, saw her turn was coming and she jerked her wheel to turn while barely braking and threw her car into a roll. Thank goodness there was no one else on the road at the time.Every time I see a driver with a phone in their hand it makes me want to shake some sense into them. What ever the communication is about – it’s not worth dying over.

This does not seem right: Danae has never done anything sensible

I thought we are of the mindset that ""It will never happen to me." We see tragedy in other people’s lives, but “I” have a magic aura that protects ME from the same results. LIKE: I can drink and drive without getting arrested…I can send/read a quick text without getting in an accident…If I got away with it once I will get away with it again. There are many dangerous things we do on a daily basis without thinking of the risk to ourself and others

I once shared the road with a bozo who had one arm out the window, holding a cigarette, and had his cell attached to his ear with the other hand. I have NO idea how he was steering, but I got out of his way.

just thinning the herd of the stupid

I’m pretty sure it’s okay for a little girl to text from the back seat of the car. It’s silly texting drivers you have to worry about.

This is a repeat from 6/29/2013

There is a monument just down the road from my home. It marks the place where a youngster died while crossing the street with a couple of friends and his mom. They were all on bikes and probably easy to see…if the young lady had her eyes on the road and not her phone. So many lives changed forever with one wrong quick glance away.

Pray to Jesus if you want to talk to him. Text while driving if you want to meet him.

@UNIQUENAME

After two very close calls because of idiots texting while driving, I also gave up driving my motorcycle. Of course living in God’s Waiting Room ( Florida ) where a huge percentage of drivers shouldn’t be allowed to drive to their mail box, was the another reason.

An excellent thread, Wiley, and understated conclusion, hope it hits home for all your readers, kids, and ADULTS TOO!!

Was his story true or did he just make it up to get her to stop tweeting?

It won’t be out of date for a long time coming.

The problem seems to be too many people treat their car as an extension of their living room and forget about their responsibility to just drive the car as safely as they can. It’s getting hard to buy a car without an information center that can even play movies. AM/FM, USB and Bluetooth is really all I want, but that’s getting to be impossible to get anymore, even in the economy cars.

Then it seems the vast majority of drivers are in a competition to be the biggest jerk on the road. Seriously, they see a problem up ahead, but instead of slowing down and moving over as needed, not to mention allowing others to move over as needed, they speed up and try to beat/block one another to the traffic jam.

Seriously, if you think driving like an aggressive moron makes you ‘alpha,’ think again, it just makes you a moron.

I’ve had two-way radios in every vehicle I’ve ever owned… and more than one radio in many of those vehicles. It is possible to talk and drive so long as you follow the cardinal rule:

Drive FIRST… talk second.

When needed, you drop the microphone and drive. There is always time to talk later, there is never enough time to drive later. The same can be said for any other conversations held while driving.

I was listening to the American Trucking Network – 700WLW – about 6 years ago when they announced that the FMSCA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) announced a new rule. Truck drivers could not use their phones without a headset. The producer to the show was late – I think it was that night – because he totaled his pickup truck when a girl crossed the highway and ran head on into him. It was her last text.

It has been experimentally demonstrated that people driving while texting or talking on a phone drive about the same as people driving while drunk.

I really, really wish lawmakers would just make driving while drunk, texting, talking on a cell, or otherwise impaired a form of premeditation. You planned on being wasted/distracted, therefore you planned on committing a crime. How many times have political leaders, scientists, teachers, friends, and especially parents told us not to drink and drive? Or talk/text and drive? People still do both and destroy their lives and others’ as well. It’s willful reckless endangerment. Let’s start treating it as such. And don’t argue that you can’t just ignore a call or text. The simple truth is, you can. Or you can pull over and then answer it. Even highways have lanes to the far side where you can pull over out of traffic. If it’s something truly important, the caller will leave a message if they have any sense themselves.

Sent my local congressman (Tampa, FL) an e-mail suggesting he propose making texting while driving a primary offense. His office replied back that if he did that he’d never get re-elected! Steve Jobs was the devil and his minions worship his idol (i-phone).

^Cell phones pre-date the iPhone by a good many years. Blaming Jobs is silly.

If it can teach Danae humility, all the better.

You’d be surprised how many parents I see at my son’s school texting while they drive their kid(s) home. I’m always behind at least one. I keep my phone in my purse in the seat next to me. Nothing is that important that it can’t wait the 15 minutes it takes me to get home.

I was hit so hard by a distracted, speeding driver that for 17 years now I’ve had zero sense of balance. Up is the opposite of gravity, is the best I can do. I will never be able to pick up my baby grandson and walk across the room to help change his diaper. I fall any time anyone surprises me with an unexpected touch that I didn’t anticipate and brace against. I will never ride a bicycle again. I had to learn how to walk again, with a cane, and in crowds, with a walker. Thank you for this strip today: maybe one person out there won’t have to go through what I have because you drew it.

Honk if you love Jesus.

Text if you want to meet him.