If you live and breathe in California, you have been run over, or almost run over, or, you have run over or almost run over someone else, while talking, texting or dialing a cell phone, while driving, riding a bicycle or just walking across the street.
Up and down the state, “Hang up and drive,” followed by the frustrated speaker’s expletive of choice, has become the epithet of our times. So it comes as no surprise that enhancing fines for misuse of cell phones while driving was the top choice of constituents who responded to a Palo Alto state senator’s annual “there ought to be a law” contest.
Enhance fines, sure. But let’s do something more graphic. Bring back Red Asphalt.
Remember those horror films we all had to watch in driver's ed. classes? The ones with the decapitated bodies, the brain-damaged accident victim turned vegetable? The blood, the gore, the dead? All the result of drinking, speeding, failure to wear a seat belt - while driving. Add texting, dialing, or babbling on your cell phone to the lists of risk that can, and sadly do, maim and kill while driving.
Remember those horror films we all had to watch in driver's ed. classes? The ones with the decapitated bodies, the brain-damaged accident victim turned vegetable? The blood, the gore, the dead? All the result of drinking, speeding, failure to wear a seat belt - while driving. Add texting, dialing, or babbling on your cell phone to the lists of risk that can, and sadly do, maim and kill while driving.
Ginger Rutland writes for The Sacramento Bee opinion pages.