The Daily Citizen, Dalton, GA

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January 30, 2010

Keep your eyes on the road

It is a shame that during a time of declining budgets, massive job losses and looming cuts to education and numerous social service programs, our lawmakers in Washington and Atlanta are having to spend time debating proposed laws dealing with driving while texting and other possible driver distractions.

On the surface, it seems idiotic to some extent that we have to debate this issue at all.

It should be patently obvious to anyone who is capable of getting a driver’s license that two eyes, two hands and your full concentration are needed to successfully navigate a car at any speed over 5 miles per hour.

Do we have to codify everything that you ought to have learned in kindergarten?

In isolation, we might argue that texting while driving — or cheeseburgering while driving for that matter — is really just another Darwinian weeding out process and that nature should be left to run its course.

The problem, of course, is that no one except for test drivers operates their cars in isolation.

We get out on I-75 at noon to drive to a business meeting in Calhoun or go shopping in Chattanooga, glance down at our phone to see who is trying to get a hold of us and before we know it we are one lane over from where we were just a second ago.

And while 999,999 times out of a million (don’t hold us to those numbers) it isn’t a problem, it is that one time out of a million when you take your eyes off the road when trouble occurs. And when it happens the result can be fatal, both for yourself and anyone else around you.

If you think about it, drunk driving used to be tolerated and seen as something that only affects the person. It wasn’t until victims of drunk driving started to speak out that we got serious about strengthening our drunk driving laws and prosecuting those who do it.

The first and most obvious solution to the problem of texting while driving and other possible distractions is to please don’t do them. Driving is serious business because you are behind the wheel of a motorized vehicle that could transform into a lethal weapon in the blink of an eye.

If we could all live with that our legislators wouldn’t have to take up their time debating it and be able to get on to more important issues.

But numerous laws are on the books to prosecute those who can’t seem to follow the basic tenets of human behavior.

We aren’t crazy about seeing valuable time taken up by an issue such as texting while driving. But when other lives are at stake as a result of someone else’s avoidable actions we recognize that legislators need to step in and take action.

The Daily Citizen

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