For some reason my favorite is the Montreal lady who was texting while walking along the sidewalk, the only problem being that at some point the sidewalk had changed from being solid to being freshly poured concrete. I’m not sure how long it took her to notice. It’s somehow just perfectly fitting, and the ideal would have been her and her phone to just fall in and remain their until the cement set. But since a quick Google didn’t turn up that specific story (I do remember reading about it) these will have to do:
In Massachusetts, a woman fell into a mall fountain while texting and walking. In Los Angeles, a man talking on his cellphone nearly strolled into the path of a black bear that had wandered into the neighbourhood. A Philadelphia man clicking away at his phone in a train station stumbled off the platform and fell head over heels onto the tracks. In Michigan, a woman sending a text message as she walked along a pier tripped and fell backwards into Lake Michigan. Her husband heard “Oh god,” and then a splash.
One of the reasons these stupid gadgets piss me off so much, besides the fact that they are distracting the attention of their owners from things like the real world around them, is that it’s texting – and other visually-centered stuff related to Internet-enabled phones – that have brought on the cellphone-and-driving bans.
Clearly, these bans are well justified safety concerns, but in the simple brains of legislators, more concerned about enforcement than justice, the texting and tweeting epidemic has become equated with all cellphone use, including just talking on the phone. Yet it’s not the “talking” part that bothers them, because almost all jurisdictions allow handsfree use via Bluetooth headsets, it’s the “holding the phone in your hand part”. Which has led to such utter idiocies as a driver being charged under this draconian law because, while stopped at a red light, she had picked up her cellphone where it had fallen on the floor from the passenger seat, and thrown it back onto the seat. The crime was, essentially, touching a cellphone while having control of a motor vehicle. And it’s idiot texters who are responsible for draconian laws like this. Sure, you can land a jet aircraft at 150 knots with one hand on the yoke and one hand on the throttle, but heaven forbid that you drive your Toyota Yaris with one hand on the wheel and one hand holding a cellphone to your ear. And the idiocy of texters is responsible for this attitude. May they all fall into water fountains and vats of fresh concrete. :mad:
To me, this seems so extreme that it’s a good way to get them to ignore any safety advice you give, since they’ll always remember this over-the-top restriction and think more reasonable ones are equally silly.
This seems less dumb than some of the other examples… Am I wrong in thinking that the horse is smart enough to avoid hazards to a moderate degree? It’s not willingly going to let you ride it off a cliff or in front of a tractor trailer like a car or bike would, right?
I’m a store cashier. I go in the back to use the bathroom. I came back, and someone is sitting on my counter, texting. “Well, I can only text while sitting down, and you don’t have any chairs here.”
And a driver who was texting hit a friend on mine who was crossing the street in a crosswalk during a green light. His defense? “It was her fault. She should have been watching where she was going.” The judge did not accept it.
Not texting but -------- I was merging onto the West End Bridge on my Harley when I saw a guy come up on my left on a sport bike (crotch rocket). No helmet, no glasses, shorts, wife-beater, flip-flops with no socks, smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone while moving at about 35-40mph. We got to the light at the end of the bridge and I pulled up beside him and asked if I could have his liver. He looked confused and I just told him I doubted he would need it all that much longer. :smack:
True, but horses stumble and startle, not to mention it’s a long way down if you drop your phone. Depending on your level of agility, it may be a long way back up to the saddle if you dismount to retrieve your phone, too.
I got a speeding ticket and took one of those online driver classes to get it erased. Part of the course was many, many videotaped interviews with the friends and family of people who had died in car accidents due to texting. It was absolutely chilling.
In Knoxville two school buses collided killing a teachers aide and two students.
Probable cause per the NTSB “was the late reaction and subsequent loss of control by the driver of bus #44 when he swerved to avoid traffic stopped ahead of him due to distraction caused by his reading a text message on his cell phone while driving.”
See, I spend half my childhood walking while reading a book. Sure, when I was little I’d bump into trees, fall into holes, stuff like that, but other time I got pretty damn good at it. I became a master of situational awareness, constantly knowing what was going on around me without consciously looking.
And now we have cellphones. Compared to books, cellphones are nothing. Those years of practice? Paid off big time.
People text while I’m ringing up their purchases. I have to tell them twice how they cost.
Then they have to go through their purses and/or pockets to find their credit cards, and go through their 97 cards to find the one they want to use. Like they couldn’t have done that instead of texting. And if they get a text while doing so, they have to read and answer it. All the while, me and the people behind them are waiting.
