Carbon Trace

Two bills before the Missouri legislature could make the roads a bit safer for cyclists (and everyone else). According to the Springfield News-Leader, one bill “seeks a ban from talking on a cell phone while driving altogether. The other would require a person to have a hands-free listening device, like a headset or Bluetooth wireless earpiece.”

Driving is a complex task that requires full attention. We humans, however, don’t take this task as seriously as we should. For more on this idea, I refer you to Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do. I finished the book this week and will review it next week. The upshot: Talking on a cell phone while driving degrades your driving skill to the level of driver operating with about two shots of alcohol. Texting while driving is equivalent to being dead drunk.

Continuing with the N-L article:

Rep. Charlie Norr, D-Springfield, is not convinced either bill could pass, but he wants to pursue legislation this year to at least ban teenagers from driving while talking on the phone.

“I guess there’s a better chance of passing that than infringing on the rights of adults,” Norr said of his proposal. “Driving is a full-time job. You have to pay attention every second.”

Teenage drivers operating automobiles while talking on the phone and texting should scare you to death. So I think the Missouri cycling community ought to push for passing one of these bills — particularly the most stringent one.

Mupedalpusher has some frightening details from a news article about the bills from Columbia:

A college student was interviewed and her comments and admission to text messaging while driving was enough to scare me to death. In fact, her comments lead me to believe she may kill someone some day. I cannot imagine trying to text message and drive. I pride myself on being good at multitasking but this is unimaginable!

Here’s the scary part of the article:
Sabeena Khosla, a junior at MU, admits she texts regularly while behind the wheel — probably two or three times every time she drives. But if she needs to have a conversation, she’ll call.

She says she knows texting is distracting.
“I’ve been surprised when I’m texting and focusing on the message, and I look up and realize I haven’t been paying attention and could have missed something,” she said.

I suppose we should expect that youth will have a cavalier attitude about the awesome responsibility of driving. But, really, this appears to be the attitude of the vast majority of drivers. We just don’t take driving as seriously as we should. And, as a result, 40,000 Americans die gruesome deaths on our roads each year — torn apart by steel, glass, and pavement.

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