I Know What I'm Doing - It Just Could Never Happen to Me

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I had started this in What I don’t Like and then rethinking the below quote, decided to qualify it and then decided to make another thread of it.

Okay, I’ve thought better of this…not because I think that throwing them in jail for a few weeks is that harsh, though I suppose it might be since nothing has happened but yet it still COULD HAVE HAPPENED OR STILL COULD HAPPEN. I think that sometimes we humans have such blind spots where we feel nothing could ever happen. No, nothing could happen to us, nothing could happen to someone else as a result of something which we have done, something careless and callous and non-intelligent.

We tend to live in the land of DENIAL. Our belief systems, some of them unconscious, are so deeply embedded within the matrixes of our minds: "Don’t be so stupid, it could never happen. I’m careful, I know what I’m doing. I’m far too intelligent and my reflexes are so good, so quick, I wouldn’t let anything happen. I have perfect control. I text and drive all the time. I talk on my cell all the time while I’m driving. I’m never really distracted. Nothing has happened so far. Whoever heard of such a thing - texting and driving causing an accident, causing someone to lose control, to ram into someone else’s car, and kill that person, destroying a human life. That’s never happened to anyone I know. I think it’s just a bunch of lies they tell us to scare us, to control us, to try to put us in our places. I know what I’m doing. It just could never happen to me. Let’s keep it real. What kind of a reality is that anyway…says the ostrich to his or her other ostrich friends.

After rethinking it, I would give these people who were caught texting and driving about 500 hours of community service. Perhaps a bit steep but just think of the plausible/possibile consequences/repercussions to their actions. Discipline needs to be about raising self-awareness, consciousness beforehand.

Part of that community service, if not all of it, would be to take these people to the hospital to do volunteer work and as I said, show them the consequences of what their actions might have come to. Okay, many of these people are not really stupid and selfish but are lacking in self awareness, discipline, having the ability to delay their gratification or curiousity. We do not often take the time to consider what we are about and to think a few steps ahead to what can happen.

I might also - and of course this may seem a bit creepy - but I think it would hopefully drive a message home to them - have them do volunteer work cleaning the area around the gravesites of some of those people who lost their lives to others texting and driving at the same time.

Part of that community service might also be having to listen to videos of those who have lost people to car accidents - listening to the pain, the loss, the rage and anger.

Too harsh you say? Imagine the little girl resting quietly in her grave with her mother and father mourning her at her gravesite, never ever again to be able to hold that child, to watch that child grow up. Imagine the woman or the man at the gravesite mourning her/his beloved never to hold that person again in her/his arms, never again to look into eyes which say “I love you”. Can you imagine an unborn child also dying with the mother because someone was too selfish and callous and irrational or at the very least unreasonable in thinking that some kind of a god would protect that person - wouldn’t allow for any such thing to happen.

Too harsh? Not within my vision, it isn’t.

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textinganddrivingsafety.com/ … ving-stats

distraction.gov/stats-resear … stics.html

handsfreeinfo.com/new-jersey-cel … gislation/

I have never even once observed any cop pulling someone over for texting and driving - not once. I see it happening all of the time…texting and driving. It’s like a virus. It doesn’t look to me that this ban is enforced.
It seems to me that it might be a good idea more than occasionally to deliberately “police” people who text and drive, to pull them over and not only fine them, but to bring them to court. Give them some kind of community service before they’ve destroyed human life.
What an intelligent nation we have - we wait til it’s too late to do something about it.

traffic.findlaw.com/traffic-tick … iving.html

Enforcement of Texting While Driving Laws

In the vast majority of places which have specific texting while driving laws, those laws allow what is called “primary enforcement.” This means that police officers may pull over and cite drivers even if they observe no other violation. In very few jurisdictions, officers may enforce driving while texting violations only when pulling over and citing a driver for another traffic violation. Most states, even those which require a separate violation to cite a driver for a handheld cell phone violation, don’t require any separate violation to cite a driver for texting while driving.

Perhaps the police need to be made more aware of what they really need to be doing while they’re on duty.
Maybe there needs to be some kind of Think Tank to address and to find wayS to raise more awareness about cell phone use while driving - like hanging signs from intermittent traffic lights prohibiting the use of them and saying something to the effect that - CELL PHONE USE KILLS…well, perhaps not quite that.

It really is an epidemic though. And we don’t seem to care until it’s too late.

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Arc,

This idea of yours, that you had in mind, it wouldn’t change much; car accidents will continue to happen, all the time.
This “scare-them-straight” is used on young kids about gangs, drugs, and prison; but it really doesn’t work all that well.

I imagine it would be just as futile in this context.

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Yes, I can see what you mean. I was coming from a kind of “scared straight” attitude though that wasn’t really my intention nor what I was trying to get across though I suspect in part it was about discipline (as in teaching) the consequences of such behavior as a deterrent. That’s why I even modified the consequences of behavior from 3 weeks in jail to community service.
It was along the lines of I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING - IT JUST COULD NEVER HAPPEN TO ME.

It was about trying to show people how we think - or rather, how we don’t really think at all at times. I actually meant it to be more about getting people to reflect on their dangerous behavior, to think more critically, about the ways in which our so-called non-thinking, our delusions and beliefs, our not taking the time to think things through, can lead to dangerous and tragic consequences. We don’t often think in this way. We think in terms of our immediate needs - gratification - nothing can wait, the illusion that it hasn’t happened yet so it won’t ever happen. The more we drive and text, and nothing happens, the greater the danger of those patterns becoming embedded within our brains, the belief that nothing can happen. We judge all of our present moments and our future moments by our past moments and experiences.

Also, we want to drive and text, this is what we do - we are an arrogant species. I actually recall a woman once driving down a busy, busy street - actually, driving while at the same time looking in her mirror and putting on lipstick. This is the insanity of it all. We just don’t think in terms of consequences. These are the times of multi-tasking. We’re quite comfortable with it. We’ve taught our selves that it’s beneficial on all occasions, even while driving apparently. When do we stop to think, to reflect, on our behavior at times, in a really conscious way? I mean for instance when we’re doing nothing - just sitting and thinking or out there walking somewhere. We don’t think in terms of “to do no harm” - and how our actions are capable of affecting others and also ourselves.

We don’t realize how life can “change on a dime” because we are just not capable of critical thinking or we choose not to. Some of us definitely have the brains and the minds to do so but why is it that when it comes to things like texting and driving (among other things) we don’t see our relationships to other people and how they can be affected by our actions.

So these disciplines like the community service are just measures to open up our minds, to take another look, to respect the things which can happen when we aren’t paying attention. Texting and driving has become so blase, like second nature to us. How capable are we of being mindful of just one thing in the moment? Driving may be in a sense almost second nature to us but paying attention and “being there” obviously is not.

It isn’t so much about wanting to “scare straight” as it is about wanting to get people to “think straight” . I think that insofar as technology goes, in great part, we can equate our emotional intelligence to the IQ of a turkey - perhaps.

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If you crash your car and die, it is because the gods willed it. Nevertheless, the gods are never too fond of people who do stupid things, like texting and driving.

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Solution;

Fit computerised braking systems to all cars. Then add a system which connects all cars via gps and laser detection etc, such that the conputers in each car knows where the others are, and will automatically avoid crashing into them.

People will always drive like dicks and get distracted, use phones etc, so ultimately we have to take some of the driving out of their hands.