Two weeks ago I’m walking through a grocery store parking lot, and some idiot who was texting pulled out and hit my left side. You know, the side with the wrist that I permanent damaged three years ago? I went to her open window and started screaming. The cops came and asked her if she was indeed texting?
“Yes, but I wasn’t going that fast.”
I ended up going to the emergency room and having X-rays and being taped. The release form stated I suffered “severe mental trauma” from having that damn wrist hit again.
For those wondering how PizzaGuy got a scar on his forehead, I had the same thing happen a few years go. Dipshit hit me from behind and I hit the guy in front of me. Initially the impact drives your had back into the headrest, but then (within a second or so) you rebound forward. Didn’t hit the guy in front hard enough to trigger the airbags, so …head meets steering wheel. Luckily for me I had a little more padding on the steering wheel than PizzaGuys Malibu, and I just had a mild concussion from the back and forth slopping of the brain.
So, you don’t know he was texting, you only know you got rearended pretty hard. Inattention is a certainty, obviously, but you don’t know where his attention was, do you. Believe it or not there were traffic accidents, just like the one you described, going on decades before cell phones. Riddle me that.
Accidents happen, man. People forget to pay attention and sometimes: whammo! Sometimes it results in a wreck, usually it results in nothing happening at all. Be mad if you want, but just remember to carve some names in your forehead with a jagged piece of metal when it’s your fault–that does seem to represent justice in your universe.
So, 7.5 out of 10 overall for a well-written and otherwise highly entertaining rant. Penalty for fabricating and playing up the texting while driving issue, however.
Oh, and if you hit the car ahead of you hard enough to overcome your seatbelt (which I’m certain you were wearing) then blame goes to Chevrolet for the nondeployment.
Well, sometimes when it walks like a duck and texts like a duck …
I was hit at an intersection many, many, many years ago when I was 19. I was in a tiny Fiat (way before they actually started heavily marketing them here) and I got accordioned between two full-sized vehicles. I think my car took the full force and barely transferred anything to the car in front of me. I do remember feeling myself being pushed forward and standing on the brakes to try and stop it.
As I said my car was totaled but at least the steel body didn’t collapse completely on me, although the engine was in the rear and the frame was pretty much crumpled around it. The car that hit me only have a messed up bumper, the car in front of me had a slightly dented bumper and scratches on the trunk hood from my bike rack. The force of the impact broke my seat off the track and threw me forward then backward. My head hit the windshield slightly and cracked it but my head stayed intact. I didn’t feel anything at first and got out and went to a gas station to call police (this was way before cell phones) because the people in the front and back cars were being hysterical which was crazy since I was the most messed up physically and vehicularly.
The tourist in the car that hit me was an older gentleman with a much younger and hoochiefied female companion. Now I didn’t actually see anything untoward happening between them but I think I can surmise, as everyone did, that he was very distracted. So I do not have a problem with the OP making an assumption based on the actions after the fact.
Yes, indeed, there were accidents before cell phones. Thing is, and I’m going to be really scientific and claim I heard this “somewhere.”
Pause to let the gravity of that sink in. Quite thoroughly researched and properly cited information alert! :o
Your reaction time or whatever it may be is even poorer while you’re texting than if you were drunk.
I understand human error, but it’s when we consciously choose to do things which negatively affect our performance while operating a kinetic death machine, that’s when I start constructing textwalls-o-bitchery.
Momentarily distracted by buzzing insect? Can happen.
Woman on the side of the road takes off her top and flashes her boobies? There’s nothing that can be done, there will be carnage unfolding momentarily. Perfectly understandable carnage at that.
Child in the backseat decides now is the perfect time to dump apple juice on your head as a funny joke. All righty then.
Deciding to drink prior to driving? This is a stupid decision you make. This is no longer “it can happen to anyone” no-one-at-fault anymore. Now it’s your fault.
Texting while driving? Nobody had a gun to your head.
Yeah, I’m making an assumption that the guy was texting and driving. This is very true. It’s also a pretty good assumption because that’s all the guy seemed to know how to do. Hardly enough to convict in a court of law. But I do know he was either not looking in the forward direction while driving, which is a dumbass thing to do, or he intentionally rammed into my vehicle. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he’s a complete dumbass and he deserves every bit of mockery that may come.
When you want to get in your vehicle and you drive on public roadways, you first have to pass a test and agree to follow the rules, and one of the rules is that you’re responsible for ensuring you don’t plow your vehicle into things. Not only do you have to agree to that, you have to make arrangements ahead of time just in case you fail, that someone will pay for the damages you cause. At no time is it ever okay to be moving your vehicle forward and not be aware of what’s in front of your vehicle. That’s like waving a gun at a crowd of people and firing off a few shots blindfolded. When you “accidentally” hurt someone, it’s not really an accident anymore, now is it?
Askthepizzaguy, you are right. Texting while driving is a conscious choice to be negligent. I’ve been guilty of it, in fact, I did it today, even while thinking, “you know, girlundone, you really shouldn’t be doing that”. After reading your pit though I really am not going to do it again. I’m usually sarcastic and generally snide much of the time. I don’t take much seriously, but it would really be horrible if I killed someone doing that.
So I’m done texting and driving as of reading this post. I’m actually sincere, which is so out of character for me.
Thank you. And as snarky as I am, I’m being dead serious with this thanks.
I realize, quite completely, that the people who do this sort of thing are the everyday you and me people, who could be otherwise pretty awesome people. But they don’t stop and think that this one little thing could really and truly cause permanent, irreparable damage to someone, or several someones, or even end lives. Why? Because that sort of thing happens to someone else, not me.
We think very poorly of the drunk drivers out there, mostly because we’ve spent a lot of time and a lot of dollars teaching the consequences. And many of us have someone in their lives, or knows someone, whose lives were affected by a drunk driver. But that same stigma is not attached to distracted driving, because we’re better than those drunks. We’re not impaired. We’re responsible people! So responsible, that we are able to multitask and handle several responsibilities at once. Look up, steer the vehicle, all clear, look down, type the next few words. I only looked down for a second. Or three.
Guy changes lanes or brakes suddenly, and we don’t react for three full seconds.
Now someone is dead or severely injured. Those three seconds matter, and that’s why I’ll be less snarky and more polite and simply ask folks, maybe you’re like girlundone over there, maybe you care enough to make that change. That change is a minor inconvenience. A few seconds or minutes delay of those all-important texts. When we compare that to the inconveniences which may occur while indulging our desire to text-n-drive, the comparison is no comparison. Instead of minutes of waiting to do a nonessential task, it could be months of therapy and recuperation, a hundred thousand dollars worth of hospital bills, pain and suffering the likes of which many people don’t experience their entire lives, or it could be a child growing up without their mother or father, or parents growing old without their child. The temporary inconvenience of waiting until we’re done driving to text someone… it definitely is nothing compared with the consequences.
I do hope folks were entertained by the rant. But if folks do actually take a minute and reflect, and realize they can stop texting and driving, and follow through…
You may never know how great a decision that is. You may never even meet the person whose life you just saved, and the reason is, you didn’t ever collide with them in the first place. And they don’t even know you just saved their life by deciding not to text right this moment.
On their behalf, I thank you, to any of you who make the pledge to change. It’s that man in the mirror… you have to start with yourself.
I don’t care if folks put the pledge down here in words on this thread, I only care when you’re in that private space inside your car, when no one is looking, if you follow through. That’s when it matters.
The really tough thing about making the right decision sometimes is that there are no known wonderful consequences, just an absence of really horrible ones. Every day you live your life where you didn’t plow your car into someone by mistake, that’s a much better day than if you did. There’s no gold star, no medal, no trophy, and nobody thanks you for it, but it’s still probably one of the most important things you’ll ever do, be a good guardian of the welfare of the lives of the random strangers around you.
One of those random strangers, from my perspective, is you. I’m looking out for you when I drive. I’ve been delivering pizzas for years and years, and that means years and years of little kids running in front of my moving vehicle to catch a ball, or simply to run around like little kids do. It means years and years of the family dog running into the street because we didn’t put her on a leash. It means the family cat darting across the road at night. It means goober who decided to jaywalk without even checking both sides of the street, without wearing reflective clothing, at night, decided to bumble his way in front of my car, and after years and years of that kind of crap happening, all of those people and critters left the street in one piece.
All of them.
Because I’m watching the road, not my phone. It’s how I get the pizza to your house without killing anyone.
Thanks to those who don’t mind reading my walls-o-text, and especially to those who will make a positive change, all on their own. The lives you save, you won’t even know about. But thank you anyway.
It did make me think. I hate hypocrisy, but I just got a jolt that I am actually a card carrying member of the “Do as I say, not as I do” club. I was texting while driving with my teenaged (almost driving age) kids in the car and I actually said, “Don’t do this when you’re driving. It’s really dangerous.” So that’s stupid and I should pit myself for that, but instead I’m just going to stop doing it. Setting a good example for my kids: Novel idea, I know…but I’m cutting edge like that.
Plus I’ve reconciled that being responsible doesn’t mean I have to grow up.
