I drive for a living, and I’m noticing more and more people on the roads with one hand on the wheel and the other on the cell phone. This by itself wouldn’t be such a bad thing if not for the fact that most of the people who do it obviously aren’t paying enough attention to their driving. I watch them swerve, stop short, and tailgate, and it’s starting to really piss me off. Last friday alone I witnessed to accidents in which the drivers were on cell phones. Is anyone else annoyed about this?
Over in INHO, in “things that bug you”, there are a lot of us who agree with you, and I am one of them.
It gets me too! So many people in my area can’t drive anyways. Attach the cell-phone to these idiots and they should have their licenses removed/revoked. I have seen many near miss accidents because of this…it is a problem. I do think it’s ok to talk on the highway going at a constant rate of speed or while driving out in the open country. BUT not while weaving through city traffic.
Hmmm, i don’t think annoyed is the correct term here JBirdman. I think it’s more along the lines of - GET THE FUCK OFF THE PHONE GOAT FELCHING ASSHOLE! or something very similiar to that. 
My one and only accident ::knocking on wood:: happened because some stupid bitch in a Mercedes thought, and that’s the key word, she could make a left in front of me while on the damn phone. Needless to say, i t-boned the bitch with my Toyota 4-Runner. It worked pretty good though. I got my truck fixed good as new with a pretty new paint job to boot and her insurance had to cover all of it, plus my rental car while my truck was being fixed. She also got a ticket from the cops that were on the scene and a fine to go with it.
She was lucky that i’m married and have two kids now. I got outta my truck, headed towards her, was just about to rip her a new asshole before i remembered my kids and thought better of making a scene. If she would have done that to me before my wife had the kids, i would have kicked her ass and happily spent time in jail for assault.
FWIW I frequently talk on the phone while I am driving.
There’s a catch to this though, I have an ear piece on my phone. It’s an all-in-one deal where the mic and headphone are in my ear.
It sounds great and except for dialing, my hands are on the steering wheel and stick shift at all appropriate times.
I consider it a cheap $60 insurance to ensure I am in control as much as possible of my vehicle.
I call it my “Headless Phone”. More because I couldn’t descibe it and it made a few people laugh, but also because it doesn’t take a lot of brains to invest in.
I endorse this little techno marvel to all that I meet and I encourage everyone to do the same. It’s just not worth hurting, harming or killing someone because you were too wrapped up in your hands on the cell phone.
Well, I must admit I do tak on a cellphone while driving down the road. Due to my job transfering calls to my cell phone is the easy was of getting me from job to job.
I do a) have a hands free unit so a quick click of a button connects me and both hands back on the wheel. Once I say hello I find a nice spot to pull over to write down directions or such.
I have seen many of the jackass morons who drive with a phone shoved in their ear. It does Piss me off.
Some people do not realize they are such a danger to others and themselves.
The bastards need to hang up or pull off the road and drive.
Osip
Osip, I am glad to see that someone is smart enough to pull over when they recieve a call. If I am driving my cell phone is off and the person calling me can leave a message. If is important to me to talk to someone while I am in my car, I pull off to the side of the road.
One of my friends was telling me that in Germany if the cops catch you driving and talking on a cell phone they suspend your license for 6 months. I think we need something like that here in the States.
All of the data I’ve read on this indicates two big things:
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The chances of an accident increase by a factor of 4 or 5 when talking on a cell phone,
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“Hands-free” models do not affect this number.
It’s in the way we talk on the phone that is the risk factor (sort of a detatched gazing into space). No technology improvements will compensate for the fact that it is about as dangerous as driving while hammered out of one’s gourd.
My bottom line is that if you are so important as to need to talk on the phone while in the car, you’re important enough to have a driver.
Bucky
Bucky, you got a source for this? I agree with # 1 but have my doubts about # 2.
My one near-miss with an asshole on a cell phone happened when my husband and I were trying to get onto a major highway not far from where we live.
This guy was having an animated discussion with his cell phone, almost side-swiped us, then continued the conversation on the freeway, almost causing us to rear-end him. Fortunately, he was driving a company truck, which gave me someone to complain to.
When I called the company after we got home, the woman at the company I talked to said we weren’t the first ones to complain, and she said she’d talk to him. She called me back after the driver was spoken to, and told me that his phone had been taken away from him, just for that reason.
The moral: Hang up and drive!
For more information: http://www.cartalk.cars.com/About/Drive-Now/
Yesterday I saw a man who will soon be spoken of in the past tense, I’m sure: He was trying to use a cell-phone while cruising on the interstate on a motorcycle. Even forgetting how unsafe this is, how the hell could he hear anything on the phone over the roar of his cycle? What a moron.
Sources on the stats are mostly from Mpls Star and Tribune, St. Paul Pioneer Press, WCCO tv. I’ll do a search to find more hard data.
This is one of the things that I really hate. If these calls are so important for them shouldn’t they be at home or at the freaking office?
Couple things. Just to get it out of the way, the reason I started this thread here is because this is not something that bugs me, it is something that fills me with insane flaming fury and searing acidic hatred (although not so much that it detracts me from my own driving). You’re right JBurton, I probably didn’t word the initial post strongly enough.
I’ll grudgingly concede that the hands free units might a step in the right direction, for sure. Having both hands in their appropriate places is a good place to start. Perhaps they should be made mandatory for those who insist on using them while driving, if outlawing them while driving is not possible. But I still don’t think it’s enough. I’ll accept your statements about your driving at face value, Techie, although I think that people like you are the exception to the rule. Most of them look so oblivious to the world, even the ones that manage to stay in their own lanes set my teeth on edge.
I’m glad to know I’m not alone in this. When I mentioned it to the guys I work with after seeing those accidents, they laughed at me. Needless to say, they all, to a man, have call phones. I don’t. I think I’m too easy to reach as it is, although I should stress that I have nothing against cell phones generally, only with people using them behind the wheel.
Cellphones alone bug me, so when people use them while driving, I want to kick them in the neck.
A few weeks ago I saw a man going through drive-thru on his cellphone. It made for a good laugh when he wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing and dumped his drink all over himself.
Ha. Loser.
Anybody ever read a short story by Ray Bradbury called “The Murderer?”
If not, I’d suggest it. It seems to me the world Bradbury described is slowly coming to pass. People literally cannot be out of touch, even for the amount of time it takes to drive from one place to another. Scary thought.
I do have a cell phone. Sometimes I take it with me in the car, but the only reason is so I can CALL OUT in case of an emergency. If it rings while I’m driving, I don’t answer. I never feel obligated to answer a phone anyway, unless it’s part of my job or I’m expecting a call. 
–Sylence
In regard to the “detached gazing” phenomenon that Bucky mentioned above: I wonder if it’s because of a tendency to try and focus on a sound that is only being heard by one ear? Maybe if the sound could be ported into the car stereo instead it would alleviate this problem. Of course, you would probably have to use some sort of audio cutout arrangement to keep the car’s cabin from filling up with some killer feedback from the microphone picking up on the speakers.
I think the detached gazing thing has more to do with the fact that most people, when they talk on the phone, automatically picture who they’re talking to. And noise of any kind is a distraction; if I’m negotiating a particularly tricky bit of road, I automatically turn the radio all the way down so I can concentrate. I witnessed a jack-ass make a left turn from the right turn lane of a one-way street the other day while yapping into his unit (and you can make any kind of pun you want out of that). Fortunately, I’ve learned to stay way the hell away from these idiots, or I would have been IN the lane when he cut across it. His wife was sitting right next to him; why couldn’t SHE talk to whoever it was and let HIM drive?
Never owned one, don’t want one, don’t need one. All the people I want to talk to already know where and when to reach me. The rest of the world can go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.
I hate cell phone dweebs too. But they can be useful.
Need to make that next exit in brutal nose to tail traffic? Having trouble merging? Look for the dim bulb with the cell phone plastered to his melon. They never see you coming. So easy it’s almost not even sporting.
I have a cell phone myself. Except I cough the sheks for voice mail. I call them back when I park it. I even have a beeper so my friends can give me the old 911 beep if their nuts are on fire.
I also sprung for a little voice recorder. My commute is sorta long and I use the time to think about my day. Now when I have a brain wave, I grab the recorder. Beats chewing guard rail.
The whole cell phone thing has gotten out of hand. You see people carrying them in stores, while eating out, etc. Doesn’t this seem a bit much??? I mean whats so important that you have to carry your little phone around everywhere you go? “Look at me I’m talking on my little phone, and you don’t have one tee hee”. AAARRrrrrrrgggghhh, don’t these people want a little peace and quite once in awhile and to get away from technology!?!?!