Mobile Phone Venting

I've been pondering this blog entry for a few days now. The other day I was coming home from work and I was sitting at a red light. Along side of me pulled another car with a male driver and a couple kids in the backseat. I glanced over at him as he stopped at the light and proceeded to turn right on red. Nothing out of the ordinary, right? But when I looked closer, I noticed that he had a cigarette in his left hand and a cell phone in his right. He was talking on the phone.

Pennsylvania has a new law in place where it is illegal to text and drive, and cell phone users should use the hands-free option on their phone while driving. This young gentleman was using the speaker option on his phone and was not holding the phone up to his ear. But he was holding it in his right hand...and talking... with a couple rowdy kids in the backseat. He was technically following the law. But really, that's three distractions. But adding the lit cigarette to his left hand adds another fourth and very dangerous distraction.

How can someone drive a car using no hands? Ok, so he was (briefly) at a red light. He had the cigarette in one hand and the cell phone in the other. Was he using a third hand to hold the steering wheel?

No, actually he held the steering wheel with the cigarette-holding hand. And as any serious smoker or even the casual smoker will tell you, that can be dangerous because you may drop your smoke! And that would be bad! Cigarettes are expensive!!!!

So after my observation of this gentleman, what did I do? Picked up my phone and did a status update to Facebook regarding this guy driving with no free hands.......while I was driving. Hey, if he can drive with four distractions, two of which are in each of his hands, I certainly can text and drive about him using my one free hand while my other hand steers the vehicle, right?

What did we ever do without cell phones with speaker/Bluetooth and texting?