Cellphone Danger

This is actually a pretty awful story -- a car accident in Lexington, KY, where a woman and her six-year-old child were serioudly injured after their truck flipped over in the oncoming lane.

Jacqueline Dotson and her six-year-old daughter had to be cut out of their vehicle after the accident in which Dotson veered into the median and over-corrected, rolling her truck over the guardrail and landing upside down after flipping several times.

A good samaritan stopped, and put a tourniquet on Dotson's severed arm. She and her daughter should be fine.

But I clearly recognize that I am a bad person because the following sentences in the story actually made me sort of laugh.

Several people stopped to help, and it turns out, the good samaritans may very well have saved Dotson's life. Sheila Vice, a nurse's aide, and an off-duty EMT from another county stopped to help, and put a tourniquet on Dotson's arm to stop the bleeding. Her arm was found near the accident still clutching a cell phone.

Let me just repeat: Her arm was found near the accident, still clutching a cell phone.

Think that was the cause of the accident? I see dozens of drivers every single day that swerve all over, stop or move abruptly...all because they've got that phone plastered to their ear. I was nearly hit in a parking lot when a women sort of spasmed and slammed on the brakes as she ducked below the dash to fetch her ringing cellphone. She was so absolutely conditioned to answer it Right. This. Second that she forgot everything else that she was doing.

The damn things should be banned while driving. Even hands-free phones, when the driver simply HAS to answer them the microsecond they ring, can cause drivers to be erratic and unpredictable.