For those of you who have never driven in Logan, Utah during the busiest hours of the day, lets just say that its typically a nightmare. While I am sure many of the drivers of Logan are completely capable and intelligent there is a large number of drivers that have no respect or common courtesy whatsoever.
IF YOU DON"T WANT TO READ THE FIRST TWO STORIES, SKIP TO THE SECOND TO LAST PARAGRAPH FOR THE POINT OF THIS POST.
I decided to relax and let my wife drive this time and I was just sitting back and watching everyone. I watched a very large, lifted Dodge truck weave in and out of lanes behind us until he was beside us driving about our pace. As soon as he was beside us I noticed that he was in the process of texting (could have been web browsing for all i know). He did not look up at the car in front of him for a full 10 seconds (and I am being modest, it felt like much longer). The traffic at that particular time was actually pretty bad, the fact that he was weaving in and out like that took a little bit of bravery if you ask me and the whole time (as it seems) he was using his phone. A truck that size and lifted could rear end a car like mine (2010 Mazda 6) at 20 miles per hour and end up on top of my son in the back seat. Hmmmmm, wow.
Moments after the Dodge truck was long gone, my wife and I were stopped at a red light next a minivan that was full of kids (looked like 4 kids, could have been 1 or 2 more). The mom was texting while we were stopped which is no big deal since everyone uses the stop light as a great chance to quickly reply to someone. But when the light turned green, she hits the gas and I didn't see her look up for quite a distance. She finally looked up and slammed on her brakes and almost hit the car in front of her. I think she was wearing a seat belt but I couldn't see any seat belts on the kids. I wonder how much that text message would have cost if she didn't slam on her brakes when she did.
Driving home that night we were following a car on the northern end of town. We could see the glow of his phone from where we were. He had his phone up on the steering wheel and was texting in a position that he could still "quickly" look at the road between letters/words. Information I had read about eye focus time from near sight to far sight still took around .5 seconds. And, when you add a stimulation such as light your focus time can take just over a second to adjust back to far sight. I also slightly researched some statistical analysis of reaction time and found out that while driving your reaction times are much less than anyone would think. While you are thinking your reaction time is instantaneous, it is actually delayed by a ballpark average of .5 - .8 seconds. (of coarse I am not throwing in exact data but its close). Now, to add on to this we were traveling at 50 - 55 miles per hour. 50 miles per hour is 73.33 feet per second. I'll say that again, that is 73.33 FEET PER SECOND. If you have the the combined eye refocus time and the normal human delay time you are losing over 1 second on average and 2 seconds on an apparent worst case scenario. Worst case scenario you will run into anything within 146.66 feet of where you are. then you have to add in the stopping distance of the vehicle you are driving. So, I know that this particular person thought he was being safer by being able to look at the road quicker but in reality he could have caused quite the accident if circumstance would have been considerably less favorable.
Back before we all had smart phones and touch screens we could write a novel with one hand in 10 seconds without even looking at our phones. Now, there are not very many people that can do that on their current phones. I know several people that have had some severely close calls while they were texting and driving. I just don't want to see my wife or kid killed from some idiot who isn't paying attention to what they are doing. Besides, if you get in a wreck and they prove that you were texting, even if nobody is injured you can still go to jail for attempted manslaughter. Wow, it seems to me that I don't really need to drive this point any further. This is my position on Texting while Driving: It doesn't just make you unsafe, but it makes everyone unsafe. There are kids on the road, babies, grandparents, spouses, parents..... lets help them get home to their families ;)
