Distracted Driving - Oh, you bet!

I frequently come across articles that I want to share. The following articles referenced really struck me in a double-team of thought. The first is from the Wall Street Journal and appeared on February 7th of this year. It is titled 'Stopping Sleepiness-How Scientists Want to Measure Drowsiness in the Future', it discusses the research for biomarkers. Scientist define biomarkers as a characteristic or substance—or, more likely, several substances—in the body that will indicate if someone is sleepy and, if so, how sleepy. It discusses among other things, yawns, blinks, folks who are found to be asleep on their feet and those who skip sleep. Obviously this is an important topic as enormous danger can and all too often does arrive when sleep deprivation and its ensuing disasters come crashing into people's lives and health and safety. From the asleep at the wheel trucker to the weary, inattentive emergency room doctor, the recipes for horrible outcomes loom terribly large. No doubt about it-we are a society with serious sleep problems. So it surely would be nice to be able to identify the 'sleep impaired' and keep them from becoming our "Harms Way" when, for example, they might just be driving a car or truck headed straight for us. As we are a long way off from this kind of safety intervention, here comes a really frightening piece of news regarding distracted driving. This second article also came from the Wall street Journal and was published on February 10th. The provocative headline reads, 'Don't Look Now: A Car That Tweets'. An illustration which accompanies the text notes, "Coming Soon To A Dashboard Near You-buy movie tickets, book a table, check stocks, search on Bling, play videos, access songs via voice command, wireless internet with 17 inch screen, check Facebook. read Twitter posts, send a Tweet..." You get the picture. The auto manufacturers claim all this is safer than thumbing and texting on your smartphone but I have some very serious doubts about that. We are reaching a saturation point, a place of 'Enough is Enough and Too Much is Too Much'...we've got enough trouble out there already and now add this mess into the mix. Simply put, this is downright stupid and scary and irresponsible and unfortunately, it is inevitable too.

Distracted Driving Accident

Maybe I'm just paranoid. A few days ago while sitting at a stoplight in the center of the city, I watched in my rear-view mirror a young lady feverishly texting away while she drove straight into my back bumper and trunk. She never looked up until the crash. Happily, no one was hurt but the property damage is many thousands of dollars. And now we are going to create access to a video arcade on wheels? All I can say is, "Uh-Oh" and again hope and pray that we all stay safe out there but it sure seems like that is just getting harder and harder. We surely have handled Distracted Driving cases before and it surely looks like we are getting ready to handle a whole lot more of them in the future. If you need us, call us. I hope you don't but if you do, make sure you get the help you need and deserve.