Reply #64: Cell phone drivers also seem to forget they are driving, and often end up

[tblue37]

slowing down to way below the speed limit. Whenever I am on a road with a higher speed limit, like our 45 mph parkway, and a driver (or more than one driver) in front of me has slowed down to 25 or 30 mph, it always turns out that the driver is talking on a cell phone.

But it isn't just cell phones. A lot of people are generally idiots when they drive, and cell phones just offer them another opportunity to behave like the idiots they are. Of all the dumbass things I have ever seen drivers do, I have to admit the one that startled me the most was the driver I saw reading a book while he was driving! He had the book in his left hand and was steering with his right hand. His eyes would glance up at the street for a second, then back to his book.

I hurried to get as far away from him as possible, even turning a block earlier than I wanted to, just so I would not be on the same street with him.

Once my kids' half brother was a passenger in a car with a friend of his. As they approached a stoplight that was turning yellow, the driver started fiddling with his car stereo. The light changed to red while he was looking down, but he failed to notice and kept driving. A large truck was entering the intersection from his right just as he went into it, and he ended up driving his car part way under the truck and totaling his car. Fortunately both boys suffered only minor injuries, no doubt because they were wearing seatbelts, the truck was entering the intersection slowly, and the kid's fiddling with his stereo had caused him to slow down significantly.