The very first precept of good driving is keeping your eyes fixed on the road. Yet there has been an explosion in so-called smartphones — the ones we Americans so love to text and sext on, whatever the weather.
This — along with a proliferation of distracting new “telematic” technologies offered by carmakers to better cater to a generation of drivers raised on video games and attention deficit disorder medications — has too many of us attempting to watch the road with one eye, while following the stock market, route guidance system, instant fuel economy readout and salty e-mail threads with the other, with an occasional pause to tweet, return a text, program a monster mix of ’80s hair bands, or update our fantasy football roster.
To say that this unprecedented wave of driver distraction poses a danger to life, limb and property is an understatement of the first order. Indeed, it’s a wonder we’re not all dead already. Yet I, for one, don’t expect anything to change anytime soon. Here’s why:
People can be remarkably stupid, given half the chance. And they are being given the whole chance. Then again, if the seemingly popular notion that the hands-free mobile phone or headset eliminates or meaningfully mitigates the risk of distracted driving sounds like the fanciful canard of free-spending telecommunication lobbyists (the sort who ply easily-bought politicians with campaign contributions in exchange for do-nothing legislation) that’s only because it is.
States that make cellphone use without hands-free attachments illegal while allowing other cell phone use to carry on unabated, not only appear to be doing something, they’re also obsoleting old equipment, helping carriers sell more new phones and extra attachments.
And yet the risk persists largely unabated, as studies show drivers remain dangerously distracted, whether their hands are free or not.
For their part, carmakers have been adding new and increasingly complex electronic features to their offerings like greedy defense contractors on shore leave. Ever anxious to differentiate their products from their competitors’, carmakers are, at the same time, forever desperate to keep up with the latest features. You won’t see them voluntarily removing functions that consumers might want.
Thus, I fear the inundation of drivers with ever-mounting possibilities for multi-task distraction is inevitable, a malevolent genie that will not be put back in the bottle.
And while more pro-active legislators will try to discourage people from such behaviors — making them illegal, as if that stops anyone from doing idiotic things in and with their moving automobiles — the carnage will surely mount.
All of which seems incredibly irresponsible until you remember that the ultimate plan has always been to automate highways and take drivers right out of the equation.
Ignoring how sad this will make us old-timers who like to drive our own cars, we can expect some resulting decline in individual accidents, as people will be able to info-tain themselves to their hearts’ content with no harmful consequences, leaving a central computer to regulate highway flow and keep cars from colliding with pedestrians, stationary objects and each other. People will travel merrily along at 100 mph, routed to conserve energy and maintain efficient traffic flow.
Except every once in a while, when 700 people will die when the mainframe glitches and 1,300 cars exit the Jersey Turnpike headed for the same space at high speed to hit the bathrooms at the same McDonald’s at the same time.
Any way you slice it, driving is a dangerous game.
