Comments on Eliza G.'s review of Hang it Up
Hang up and drive!
Yesterday afternoon I was trying to merge onto a freeway loop and found myself doing a dangerous dance with a metallic green Prius. I signaled, I sped up, I slowed down, I couldn't figure out what this car was about to do. Having just gotten off the freeway, it didn't seem likely that it was heading back onto it in the opposite direction, but people do turn around... I was running out of space and about to miss the entrance when the driver suddenly pulled out of the lane, fortunately leaving me my bumper, and allowing me to move over.
When the car passed I saw something that explained it all. The driver wasn't in the car. He was talking on a cell phone and clearly a zillion miles away.
I would have loved to be able to signal to this jerk (I'm feeling polite) to hang up and drive, but had no idea what to do. I'm ruling out the obvious - it's not about making people angry or letting them know that you are, it's about sending a message. A clear, calm message: Drive the car. Put the cell phone down and pay attention to what you're doing before you cause an accident.
States are passing hands-free laws, but I don't think that's much of a solution. The driver I saw yesterday could have dialed using cosmic rays, he was still totally out of it when it came to operating the car.
How to do it? All I can think of is an exaggerated 'hanging it up' gesture, an arm moving down.
Can we take our roads back?
Eliza G.'s keywords: cell phones, drivers
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Jenn A. says:
I hear ya - in California, we are cracking down on this behavior. Starting in June or July, law enforcement will be writing tickets for people talking on their phones without a headset!
Such legislation has been in effect in other places -- Brazil comes to mind - for YEARS. To me, it's just as bad as people who are walking around with headphones - equally oblivious and cutting off people in sidewalks and walking in front of moving cars ...
Eliza G. says:
The intended point of this review was to collect ideas about a way to ask drivers who are using cell phones to hang up. Law enforcement isn't going to cut it. The fine in California will start at $20. I can't call that much of a deterrent, leaving out the fact that people will still be talking.
As I said before, nothing angry - just a wave that conveys a simple request to hang it up.
Jenn A. says:
Yeah, if you do that in California, someone will pull a gun on you. I've seen some pretty astonishing things on the road -- I remember watching a woman read a paperback novel on her steering wheel while driving 45 mph across the Bay Bridge. I called CHP but we were off the bridge by the time I got through to them (btw, I was the passenger). She didn't even have her eyes on the ROAD!
Bill Cosby had a great routine, years ago, about bad drivers -- had to do with shooting a non-removable dart on someone's car and once you had accumulated a number of darts, you had to stop driving. Catch was, you only got a certain number of darts so you couldn't go endlessly shooting bad driver's cars with darts.