Driving distracted

Regular readers may remember this from yesterday’s post in the “Technology Troubleshooting” section. I decided to repeat it today.

There was an interesting story that I read earlier this week.

B.C. man guilty of using mobile while driving,
even though it had a dead battery

Now, I’m not guilty of text while driving although I will admit that there really is a curiosity when you get a message on your phone while driving. You know what they say about curiosity and cats and all that. As a dog walker, I see people on their phones all the time as they go whizzing down the roads here. One of the roads that we walk has a speed limit of 80 km/h and the other 60 km/h because it’s a school zone.

As a matter of habit, I will try to make eye contact of the driver. As a fallback, if that fails, I keep my eyes on him/her just to see if they are paying attention to what they’re doing. I don’t want to get hit by a car and I most certainly don’t want Jaimie too either.

I don’t know what the answer is to those who use their phone while driving except for the increased penalties that we now have in Ontario. I think my reaction to the title above was a little strong in the beginning because it sounded bizarre. And yet, I totally understand the logic. I really do.

What do YOU do when your phone is unresponsive. You probably put more attention to it to see if you could find out what’s wrong. I think it’s just human nature to want to have a fix. Of course, if you’re like me, you do the insane thing of thinking that if I press harder, somehow it will fix it.

I’ve had people swerve on the road as they’re passing so I can testify that distracted driving really is a thing. It naturally follows that trying to debug or fix a problem would fall into that category.

I don’t ever want to get a ticket or the fine involved.

My new driving habit? I put my phone in a jacket pocket and zip the pocket. It’s a habit that’s worked well over the winter and the spring when I’m wearing a jacket. I’ve always hoped that, if I ever got stopped in a traffic stop or blitz, that it would be enough to convince an officer that I’m serious about not using it while driving. Now that the warmer weather is on the horizon, I’ll have to come up with a new technique.

How do you handle this situation yourself?

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