Texting
Over a great pizza and a nice glass (or more) of red wine we, the illustrious editors chewing and drinking our monthly stipend from the Aegis Journal came around to the anti texting laws being proffered or enacted in many different states.
While some of these laws do have a legitimate pupose (such as no texting while driving laws), we generally operate as self-described libertarians, whereby we abhor any more laws or regulations that impact on our liberty. And as it relates to this subject, we started exchanging anecdotes of our experiences of distracted people texting…
* Editor hit by a mom texting while she was pushing a shopping cart at Wal-Mart.
* Editor watched a young boy, 14-16 texting while riding his BMX bike – he rolled into a cactus patch… editor laughed but did help the young man for about 15 min pull out bike – both tires flat and helped remove needles from his arms legs and back – owe!!!!
• Young girl texting while walking with her friends – the friends stopped at a street crossing and she did not, friends pulled her off the street and away from cars that most certainly would have hit her.
• Waitress texting someone and not coming back with our glass of wine… very serious
• Mom and child texting each other in a library to find each other – even though they were less than 40 feet apart from one another.
• Wholesale property auction with a guy bidding on a home by texting the auctioneer. According to the auctioneer – this fellow had purchased millions of dollars worth of real estate just by texting his offers.
Once we finished, we figured that with so many stories – there had to be some profoundly good videos of this type of activity somewhere on the internet – and, darned if we weren’t right.
A woman texting walks into a fountain; another bites it on live TV. One person walks off a pier while texting. And, as a coup de gras, of sorts, a teenager falls down a man hole while texting. Go ahead and search these out on the internet… the case involving the fountain is great… a head-first full gainer.
And our conclusions from this ? We concluded that there is not a need for any more laws against texting, it is time to thin the herd! Yet they may take some of the good folks with them – ban texting for everyone. Say, where is our wine?
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With -All- our fabulous Technology today, it would be relatively easy to install motion sensor in Cell phones and/or vehicles that terminate Texting when the vehicle is in motion// Thus one can still Text whilst FULLY stopped at a Stop Light! I am particularly in favor as a “busy” Lady turned Left into my husband’s vehicle- – apparently to her texting was more important than looking where she was going! Thankfully both drivers survived (but both vehicles were “totalled”)
I just got hit in Amsterdam by a gal listing to her iPod and texting while riding a bicycle. All I could say was … are you ok?” I should have said, time to put down the phone and back away from it!”