Jennifer Smith doesn’t like the term “accident.” It implies too much chance and too little culpability.
A “crash” killed her mother in 2008, she insists, when her car was broadsided by another vehicle while on her way to pick up cat food. The other driver, a 20-year-old college student, ran a red light while talking on his mobile phone, a distraction that he immediately admitted and cited as the catalyst of the fatal event.
“He was remorseful,” Smith, now 43, said. “He never changed his story.”
Yet in federal records, the death isn’t attributed to distraction or mobile-phone use. It’s just another line item on the grim annual toll taken by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration [NHTSA]—one of 37,262 that year. Three months later, Smith quit her job as a realtor and formed Stopdistractions.org, a nonprofit lobbying and support group. Her intent was to make the tragic loss of her mother an anomaly.
To that end, she has been wildly unsuccessful. Nine years later, the problem of death-by-distraction has gotten much worse.
There are three big clues about why this is happening..
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Is it the smartphone, or the user? Same as guns, it's not the gun, it's the human using it that kills.Cars, knives, ropes and clubs cannot kill. Humans kill.
ReplyDeleteShe's wasting her time.
ReplyDeleteAnother person with a personal tragedy who now has a mission to make sure no one else suffers like her and she MUST tell the world. SHE can make sure you never use your cell while driving, if we would only just listen to her.
The Law of Unintended Consequences.
Cell phones are great. Cars are, too. Being young, indestructible, and driving? Also wonderful.
There's a downside to all of that, too. She thinks she can alter any of it.
Maybe she can talk with the commanders of the War on Drugs for some tips on how to change human behavior.
Keep cheering.
We need smart phone control now
ReplyDeleteWe need a law to make cell phones inoperable while inside a moving car
ReplyDeleteShadow - I sure the technology is there for that. Unfortunately, it would happen to anyone while moving in a car, not just the driver.
ReplyDeleteA passenger not being able to use a cell phone while it is in motion is not a monumental loss
ReplyDelete