Driving—You’re Responsible

It’s almost too easy to drive a car these days. Everybody used to have to drive a manual transmission, coordinating the clutch, gas, and brake pedals in addition to the gear shift: you had to pay attention. And before power steering became a standard feature, drivers were forced to keep their hands at “10” and “2” because you had to actually steer the car and hold on with an iron grip or the lousy shocks and bumpy roads would tear the steering wheel out of your hand. But today, it’s child’s play to handle thousands of pounds of steel and horsepower with a single hand—even no hands at all if you prop your elbows just right so that your fingers can manipulate the keyboard on your cell phone. Once you get it down, driving a car is super easy; the hardest thing these days is learning how far you need to reach to hit the cup holder without looking. These days there aren’t enough distractions involved with driving the car; therefore, many people occupy their free time at the wheel by manipulating their own distractions.
Driving south on Highway 101 during the afternoon rush hour last week, I noticed a man next to me in the Diamond Lane with one hand on the wheel and one hand up on his cell phone. In the seat next to him a teenaged girl played with her long blond braid, her head leaning against the passenger door window. I was in the lane beside them, and for a long time they were ahead of me in their lane, then I was ahead of them, back and forth with the ebb and flow of traffic at that hour. Miles later, I took my exit; he was still talking on his phone. I imagined what I would have said to him if, by chance, we happened to take the same exit and ended up next to each other in line for groceries or takeout or something.
“Oh, hey. You’re the guy who was driving next to me on the freeway talking on your phone.”
“What?”
“Yeah. By the way, what do you tell your daughter about talking and texting while driving? I mean, do you tell her never to do it, that it’s a bad idea? And if you do, I wonder whether you think she’s more likely to do what you say or what you do?”
“Well . . .”
“Don’t get me wrong; it’s not like I always do everything that I’m supposed to either. It’s just that I’m a runner, and my friends are runners and triathletes, so one of us is always out there on the roads, running, or biking. Not on the freeway, of course. But if you’ll talk on the phone at 70 mph on the freeway, then you probably do it wherever you are.”
“What of it? I’m a careful driver. I pay attention. I’ve never been in a serious accident.”
“Of course. I believe you. If you’re by yourself in the car and run off the road someday because you’re on the phone, and maybe you ding the car up or get hurt a little, you can always say, ‘Well that was a dumb thing to do.’ You can patch yourself up and get the car fixed and change your ways for a while. No harm. No foul. I’m sure that you would never put your daughter or family at risk or harm anybody intentionally. But what if when you ran off the road you hit a couple of runners or mowed down a group of cyclists? What about them? What about their families?”
“That wouldn’t happen. If I saw people on the road, I would be extra careful.”
“Do you know how many times when I’m out running I see people who are coming towards me in their car going 50-60 miles an hour looking down instead of forward not looking at me? or they’re actually on their phone—and maybe they don’t even see me? Every day. Every day that I go for a run at least one driver does not look up to catch my eye. And I’m looking at them. I’m trying to force them to see me. But some of them don’t.”
 Some people are currently trying to pass a bill to put a warning label on sugary drinks. It seems there’s talk that these flavored drinks, with all that extra sugar, can make people fat or cause diabetes, but for some reason the general public doesn’t realize that. A warning label, though, will bring some much needed awareness to the dangers of sugary drinks in society.
You can’t even buy a curling iron without receiving a thick instruction manual that starts out listing all of the conditions that are dangerous: Don’t operate while in the shower. Don’t place a hot curling iron on top of a gas tank. Don’t operate a curling iron and heavy machinery at the same time.
I’d like to propose a bill myself. Let’s put a Warning Label on every motor vehicle, and let’s put these warnings into every car’s instruction manual also. It could read:
THIS VEHICLE IS NOT A TOY
IT IS A 4,500 POUND WEAPON
OPERATORS MUST PAY FULL ATTENTION TO DRIVING AT ALL TIMES
DO NOT OPERATE VEHICLE WHILE DISTRACTED
STAY ALERT: SAFE DRIVING IS YOUR FIRST PRIORITY
DURING AN EMERGENCY: IGNORE YOUR PHONE
WHEN TAKING EVASIVE ACTION: IGNORE YOUR PHONE
WHEN RECEIVING A CALL OR TEXT: WAIT TO USE YOUR PHONE UNTIL YOU HAVE STOPPED AND EXITED THE VEHICLE, OR,
IGNORE YOUR PHONE
IMPROPER USE OF THIS VEHICLE MAY RESULT IN THE LOSS OF AN INNOCENT PERSON’S LIFE
YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SAFE HANDLING OF THIS VEHICLE