Well Duh?

So Washington state passed a law that makes it illegal to text message while operating a motor vehicle. A no brainer that was due. I cannot imagine trying to compose a text message in traffic. At least not without causing a major accident. But that is just me. Apparently, according to one woman interviewed about it, she does that all the time. And she has only had once close call. She also went on record that she would be opposed to to any such law here. Well of course she would. The fact that she texts while driving is an indicator of how good her decision making is, which is to say not very.

But just like cell phones these text addicts cannot go from A to B without being constantly in touch with everyone they know. Now I have to worry that some crack berry addicted moron is cruising down the street in and overpowered rice rocket texting a message to his buddies while careening at me. Nice. I think technology is making people more and more stupid. It is lowering the common denominator to record lows. If someone can take a piece of technology and devise the most stupid use or way to use it they will.

Take texting in the first place. It is a matter of using 10 keys to replace 50 keys on a keyboard on a screen that will hold 40 characters max, not the best platform but what the heck! And to become efficient you have to shrink the English language to the equivalent of a few hundred TLA's (three letter acronyms). Hey whack job you are holding a telephone! Call the person, talk that's what the device was built for! Oh no I forgot your phone is not for talking it is for listening to music playing games and taking pictures. Of course that is why you can't live without it.


I digress. To get back to the Washington state law. It is illegal to text while driving but you cannot be stooped for it. You can only be charged if you are doing something else wrong at the same time. Washington is being criticized for that saying it makes the law much less effective. But I disagree, the Washington law makers have a loop hole. You see to my way of thinking if you are text messaging while driving you are, by definition, driving with undue care and attention. Surely they have laws against that in Washington. And if they do, voila, there is the first thing they did wrong and you can now nail them for the secondary infraction. Pretty clever I think.

Not texting anyone behind the wheel...


Randy