Joined: 04 May 2006
Posts: 238
Location: Your mom's house.
| Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 6:24 am Post subject: Make sure your seatbelts are securely fastened | |
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Today I had the privilege of driving down the beautiful highway 1 that they have in California.
I was thumbing through the various music titles on the display of my mp3 player with the radio cranked up. I also had a bunch of friends in the car so we were having a pretty good time making jokes and conversing. I had a laptop with me in the car and I was compiling playlists for them every time they heard a song they liked. Meanwhile I had some headphones on because I was watching the movie I had playing on the in dash DVD player with wireless remote. I also had my trusty GPS navigation giving me directions. All of this I was doing while eating the fast food that we had stopped to get earlier. While in the middle of a phone call the radar detector on my dash started going crazy. After readjusting my rear view mirror to see behind me, instead of the faces of my friends in the backseat, I noticed a police officer was pulling me over. I pulled over to the side of the road and when the officer approached he asked if I knew why I had been pulled over. I replied that I hadn’t the faintest idea. He told me that he saw me talking on my cell phone. There was a new law implemented today in California that says you must have a hands free device in order to talk on your cell phone while driving. Apparently talking on a cell while driving in California is very distracting and can lead to unsafe driving. In order to avoid a ticket I had to think fast. I told the officer that I was not really talking on my cell phone. I told him that I was simply holding my phone because I was text messaging with it while driving. I then asked him if I was commiting a violation for doing that instead. He said there was no law against text messaging while driving and I was free to do that as much as I pleased just as long as I make sure that I do not (under any circumstances) have a verbal conversation on it without a hands free device. I told him that I will make sure to keep that in mind and he let me off with a warning. Welcome to the twilight zone. |
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Joined: 04 Jul 2003
Posts: 420
Location: Somewhere between here and there...
| Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 11:39 pm Post subject: | |
It's kinda scary to know that people can't talk on their cells, but they can text while driving.  They are both distractions to the driver.
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Joined: 04 May 2006
Posts: 238
Location: Your mom's house.
| Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 3:10 am Post subject: | |||
I think Cali should take this a step further and make it a violation to talk on your cell phone without a hands free device while walking. We don't want people getting hurt because they are too distracted to see where they're going. |
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Joined: 09 Feb 2008
Posts: 1292
Location: Brand Central
| Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 12:42 pm Post subject: | |
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we've had a rash of fatal single car accidents here lately, all involving 18-25 y/o drivers... 5 of them in the past 6 or 8 months by my count... sunny day, no one else involved
based on some of the stuff i see on the roads around me i'm inclined to think these asshats were texting while driving, and went off the road and hit that tree at 50 mph this is quite scary IMO. |
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