Yak, Yak, Yak, Whoa!

Yeah, I guess I should be the utterly responsible commentator and agree that cell phones are evil things when used in a rolling vehicle. They can be exactly that, no doubt, but do we really need to ban their use? Legislation is appropriate with stuff like robbery and murder and fraud, but are we going to prosecute folks for talking on the blower while they’re rolling across the prairies on a lonely summer’s night?

Hell, they’re just calling dispatch to lie about something. And since brevity is the first rule of successful fibbing, such calls are going to last 33 seconds, tops. Hardly worth a law.

Admittedly, that’s a lot different from the real-estate saleslady in her shiny Lexus trying desperately — while stop-starting through a Toronto rush hour with one hand — to convince Joe Buyer that his $200,000 budget can buy a $500,000 house. “Rates are never going to be lower,” she urges, trying to work that little Texas Instruments number cruncher with her other paw.

I’m frightened of people like that, but I can’t believe that a law is going to be much help in curbing their cavalier attitude to details like traffic safety.

The thing is, there are distractions galore when you’re sitting in the driver’s seat. Before the cell phone, our Lexus lady would have been rehearsing her speech to Joe instead of delivering it, but the distraction would have been much the same. Slice it how you like, at least one of her hands was going to be on the calculator and her mind was going to be firmly on the deal.

Likewise with the unhappy in love. The whimpering 18-year-old guy who pleads by cellular means with the girlfriend who — wisely, I’d guess — told him to take a hike an hour ago is not someone I want to meet on the road. But would I feel more confident about my personal safety if the cell phone hadn’t been invented? I think not.

Once again, would a law preventing our lovelorn teenager from calling that Jo-Beth vixen while piloting his lowered Civic with the 17-inch wheels make any difference? No way, he was going to make his little Honda look stupid regardless.

Sorry, pardon me. Wrong conclusion. Different subject too, though it’s one worth at least 500 words or so. Can you believe what they do to those tiny four-bangers these days?

Back to cell phones and other distractions, and let me make it personal. I’ve spent 40 years driving, 39 of them legally, and I’ve seen my share of distractions. I can write publicly about most of them, and I can tell you that my use of a cell phone while driving is not at the top of my own danger list.

That space is reserved for conversation with my passengers. Frankly, I try to be silent when I’m driving, and it’s a bother to have someone yakking at me while I’m trying to avoid Lady Lexus and Kid Civic precisely because I know I need to focus on the driving task. I don’t like hauling people around at all. And if I’m forced to do so, they’d better not expect witty conversation about anything.

But how many times have you seen a completely distracted driver engaged in animated chat with the person or persons riding shotgun? Like maybe 10 times a day, every day?

That particular danger comes in several forms, of course. There’s the husband and wife arguing about wallpaper or custody or whatever, arms waving, heads bobbing, car on its own. The gaggle of 16-year-old girls in Mum’s Benz laughing about virtually anything, possibly even how one of them just made a fool of that poor sap in the Civic. The three young guys just off work and heading out to the arena to play some shinny, odd-smelling smoke drifting out of the no-drafts on Jimmy’s old F-150 while they debate the relative merits of money spent on chrome wheels versus Flowmasters. Or my own favourite, the pair of very nice librarian ladies in a pristine Tempo tut-tutting about the scandal of high-school girls with bare navels.

Now then, every last one of those folks is a serious danger to the whole lot of us. So what do we ban? Arguments? Maybe 16-year-old girls? Shinny? Navels? Conversation in a moving car?

Second place on my list goes to CDs, by the way, or the changing thereof. As I search through the mess on the passenger seat for the case that goes with the Bob Seger album, I’ve been known to lose concentration. As focus-busters go, it’s a lot worse than hearing my infinitely better half on my cell ask me to pick up some milk on the way home. So shall we outlaw CD players in our cars?

What we need is a law that demands care and concentration at the wheel. But hold on, we already have it. We have a bunch of them. There’s the one about careless driving, for instance, which seems to fit the bill. Maybe even dangerous driving. Improper lane change. Improper left turn. You name it, we’ve already got it.

Now all we need is someone to enforce it.