Bummed out Christmas

Unfortunately, it has become commonplace to read press reports about drivers on cell phones whose priorities are terribly-sometimes fatally-misplaced.
Everybody knows it’s a big, big problem, owing quite simply to the fact the country is saturated with mostly well meaning wireless consumers and drivers whose love of cell phones and street machines rank only behind God, country and Sony’s PlayStation 3. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the National Transportation Board and university researchers have all weighed in with judgment: cell phones and driving do not mix.
States have responded by enacting laws or attempting to pass legislation outlawing driver use of handheld phones, while allowing use of hands-free devices to carry on wireless conversations behind the wheel. But research and reality indicate state lawmakers have let themselves be hoodwinked by hands-free. A wholesale ban on cellular chatter while driving-handsets and hands-free-appears to be a non-starter for everyone except teenage drivers.
The cell phone industry has tried to promote safe driving, but people simply love its products too much to listen.
Too bad you cannot legislate common sense because much of the wayward driving and other distractions associated with wireless devices (Did you know pedestrians talking on cell phones while attempting to cross the street pose a safety risk to drivers?) would be solved.
But if laws to prohibit talking on cell phones while driving don’t work, how about a law banning cell-phone talking. Period.
A twenty-something Michigan woman is reported to have been given a ticket and sentenced to a month in jail after pleading guilty to talking on her cell phone in the wee hours of the morning after a cookout some hours earlier. The press report didn’t say how loudly she was talking on her mobile phone, only that it was enough to violate the city’s noise ordinance. The woman’s family is a bit angry about all this, hiring an attorney to set things straight.
“If my daughter had done something to deserve to be in jail, I wouldn’t have a problem with it,” said Carmen Granata’s father, Joe Granata, 50, of Warren, Mich. “But this is insane,” the Associated Press reported. The wire service said Granata has been permitted to take leave from Macomb County Jail to work as a veterinarian aide and is set to be freed from the klink by mid-month. Just in time to open presents.