Carsons Corner

I’ll hang up my phone when you get off my bumper!

Starting July 1, your phone has to go hands free or you get a ticket.  First offense is $20 and subsequent fined are $50.  With more people in the city limits of Los Angeles than there are in most Midwestern states this law is noting more than another attempt to generate money for the CHP doughnut fund.

California lawmakers know that the proliferation of the cellular telephone has made it a revenue source just waiting to be tapped.  State Sen. Joe Simitian cites studies by the Gestapo … er California Highway Patrol that claims cell phone use is the number one cause of distracted drivers.  Remember, when a cop is filling out an accident report, he can put whatever he wants on the line that says “cause”.

You see, it isn’t that talking on the phone is a problem.  Anyone can talk on the phone and drive a car at the same time.  The problem with talking on the phone and driving a car is California is that there are 1) too many stupid people on the road and 2) not enough road to handle the stupid people.

The problem with Californians on the phone behind the wheel and too many stupid people is that there are almost 15 million people living in the greater Los Angeles area alone – this includes Orange County, the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys, and what is known as the “Inland Empire”.  If it is assumed that greater San Diego and the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area have roughly the same number of people as well, you’re looking at almost 50-60 million people crammed into areas whose highway infrastructure is only capable of managing 25% of those numbers roughly 12.5 – 15 million people total for all three places – not each!

The other problem – not enough road to handle the people – is the fault of the state of California itself.  It dumps billions of dollars down the rabbit hole known as the educational system that it should be using for transportation.  Face it, the government-run education system in America is a complete and total failure.  States dump billions of dollars into education and government-run schools are churning out nothing but liberal morons by the millions (an address of this topic in more detail is forthcoming, so stay tuned).  The money wasted on education would be better spent building new and better and safer roads. 

How many times a day while driving does the average Californian face this scenario?  While driving you look up into your mirror and suddenly, all you can see is the driver of the car behind you because he is literally two or three inches from your bumper.  It’s one thing to see it when you’re sitting at a stop light, but an entirely different one when you’re both moving at 70 mph on the highway.  California has so few two-lane roads (you know what a two-lane road is, right? It’s a road with two lanes, one in either direction) that there is no reason for this to happen.  If you are driving down a freeway and some idiot is riding your bumper that close, he has a serious problem and should not be behind the wheel.  Driving lanes are 12 feet wide, so that means, you tailgating doofus, on a three or four-lane freeway, you have between 12 and 24 feet of space in which to drive your car that isn’t right on someone else’s bumper.  And if you happen to be talking on the phone when the person in front of you slams on his brakes, the real reason you had your accident wasn’t because you were talking on the phone, you were driving too aggressively and tailgating.  There’s no way you could have stopped your car even if your cell phone had been in the trunk the whole time.

Accident reports by the Gestapo … er … CHP that list talking on the cell phone as the cause are not always factually accurate.  Many Californians get behind the wheel and they become a real hazard.  Talking on the phone doesn’t compound the problem, it just becomes a scapegoat when the driver doesn’t want to admit that the person he just hit cut him off and now he’s gone all road rage but he didn’t bother to hang up the phone.  The idiot is thinking, “I’d rather say I was on the phone than say I was tailgating this guy because he cut me off and now I wanted to get even with him.”

If California wants to curtail the number of accidents reported in a given year, try building more roads and letting parents put their children in private schools or home schooling.  It will truly be a great day in America when states have all the money they need to build roads, the federal government has all the money it needs to defend America with the greatest military force in the world and children are educated in private schools or at home.

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