Thursday, April 18, 2013

FRIDAY FAST ONES

1.)   All of these gun people and all their excuses proclaimed as "protecting their rights" at the peril of
everyone around them are just making me sick to my stomach.  It is clear that they want to go back to the Wild West and have everyone armed and brandishing their weaponry and shooting it out in the streets.  They are thugs.  And don't  even go there about the "hunters." An excuse for archaic, bad behavior.

2.)  I understand from Time magazine that the gourmet cupcake industry is collapsing.  I have never managed to have a gourmet cupcake.  I have missed the trend completely. We don't seem to have cupcake shops out where I live - the closest we have is Nothing Bundt Cake.  They have tiny bundt cakes which are frequently served at my book club meetings. Maybe the news is premature and I will still get my chance.

3.)  I admit that I use my status as a cranky old bag to honk, wag my finger and otherwise attempt to discourage people I see driving and using their cell phones. And I don't even care about getting flipped off - which happens.

The reason I do this is because my son and my husband spend a lot of time on their bikes on the road - they have close calls pretty much every time they go out because of distracted drivers.  And statistically it isn't teens who are the worst culprits  - it's adults.  In fact, 78 percent of mothers with children under age two acknowledge talking on the phone while driving with their babies; 26 percent say they text or check their e-mail.


There have been previous studies that show that texting while driving is six times as dangerous as driving drunk. The fact that 39 states have recently banned texting while driving does not seem to be helping the problem at all.

If we're living in a world where 50 percent of the drivers around you might be texting as they drive, that puts everyone around them at risk.  People interviewed who admit to driving while texting and using the phone seem only to focus on their own safety. I am much more concerned with the lives they seem to have forgotten about - the lives of the people they will mow down.

4 comments:

smalltownme said...

#3 Here the car drivers bitch loudly about the bike riders. "They don't pay taxes here, they shouldn't be on our roads." It's like they want to make the whole valley a gated community and have forgotten our main economy is tourism. And yes, they're on their cell phones freaking out because they are late to yoga or wine tasting or whatever. And yelling at my son on his bike, who is obeying all the road laws.

knittergran said...

Boy oh boy, do I agree about the dangers of people doing everything BUT driving when they are at the wheel. My husband rides his bike a couple of times locally during the week, and then 60 miles or so on a weekend day. Scares me, but he loves the activity.

Karen (formerly kcinnova) said...

I noticed (years ago) that moms of young kids are the worst with cell phones and driving. I don't know what will be the wake-up call.
Our city has a few "ghost bikes" that I need to photograph and blog about.

Karen (formerly kcinnova) said...

Maybe we need a blogger get-together for those of us who have never tasted gourmet cupcakes!