h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was going to post this when it happened, but I couldn't...

Anyway, I had dropped Faith off at school, and was on my way back home to wake Gracie up to take her to R's. I'd turned onto Pacific from Butte, and was passing E. Evidently this person wasn't looking when s/he turned onto Pacific, because it rapidly became obvious that the big brownish thing was going to be occupying the same space as my 2-door Saturn It's a good thing I was right by the Family Resource Center, because I was able to pull sideways off the road, with a foot or 2 to spare. I sat there for a minute or so, then headed home, told Tom, posted to Facebook, then ran afoul of server problems here on h2g2.

Awesome solution to the physics problem.

Oh, my!

As long as you're okay that's the main thing!

One thing that annoys me is that the police seem to be all over you in this country if you go 1 mile an hour over the speed limit, but mostly turn a blind eye to idiot drivers who do silly things like you've just experienced.

There's a slow boiling movement across this country to really clamp down on Distracted Driving. One campaign line is "a phone in one hand, a ticket in the other."

As a , I see it all the time. People just don't look, even if they're not on the phone or texting or eating or checking their makeup or brushing their teeth (no, really, I saw a guy brushing his teeth on the way in to work one day; dixie cup in one hand, toothbrush in the other, looking in the mirror then spitting out the window!)

Maybe he was a firm believer in having a clean, minty smile when he appeared before the judge?

That was quick thinking, Amy. I'm glad you were able to get out of the way. Sheesh. A bit more excitement than you needed.

Did the other driver bother to stop after running you off the road?

I don't know that the other driver even noticed

George Carlin had a good idea. Every driver carries a high powered dart gun. The darts have little flags that say "AE!" on them. Anytime someone makes an ae move on the road, you shoot their car with a dart. Any car that gets three darts on it, the driver loses his license.

That is the kind of excitement you don't need (again).

Glad you were able to get out of the way. Is using a mobile phone while driving not banned over there? It is illegal here although some idiots still do it. There was a good campaign last year where they targeted the people calling the driver rather than the driver themselves, saying if you know someone is driving then hang up to protect them. They showed a wife chatting to her husband then hearing a crash and then silence. Was very well done I thought.

I really wish we could get more ads like that over here. We've got only one that I've seen recently. It features a mother showing the last text that her daughter sent before she ran a red light. I don't know why there is a reluctance to act on this. When polled, Americans overwhelmingly support laws banning cellphone use while driving, texting overwhelmingly so. And yet rules banning such things is typically only on the local level, say just in the school zones of certain districts. And there is only limited public education campaigns against distracted driving, the ad I mentioned above being the only one I can currently recall. The telecoms claim to support the idea of such action but no one is really pushing for it. If there is indeed no concerted opposition to this, then why isn't this an easy fix?

Only hands-free cell phone use while driving is permitted in California. That said, we have very little traffic law enforcement of any kind, as the number of highway patrol officers has not grown with the number of drivers. As a result, by the time you get a ticket in this state, you probably Really Really deserve it, probably a hundred times over.

When determining the cause of a collision severe enough to require emergency response, investigators often check to see what was happening at the time of the crash, including cell phone calls and texting.

I think the same is kind of true here, there aren't police officers on street corners with cameras to catch people using their phones but you will probably go to prison if you cause a serious accident and your phone records show you were calling or texting at the time.

The way to go is similar to the drinking and driving message over here, make it socially unacceptable to do it an people will police themselves.

One thing I do, and I know it's petty and probably pointless, is I honk at drivers on their phones. I especially like doing this when I'm sitting at a red light and the cars making a left hand turn from my right are passing close to me, extra-especially when they have their window down. My bike has an air horn.

I like imagining that whoever they are talking to hears it and hangs up.

If you do this, just stare straight ahead. No one will know why you honked your horn so you won't get the finger.

Many people seem to be oblivious to their surroundings. There are administrators who accept cell phone calls while they're in a coffee shop or bistro, and they give out sensitive personal information about the people in their case files as if there weren't dozens of people within earshot.