When I pull up to a stoplight these days, I’m appalled more times than I care to count by what I witness going on in the cars around me—that is, absolutely nothing to do with safe driving. To my left, there’s a woman who didn’t wake up for work in time to put on her makeup at home, so she’s applying mascara in her rearview mirror with her mouth hanging open like a stunned animal. To my right, there’s a guy who’s flagrantly disobeying California law by gabbing directly into his cell phone. And when the light turns green, I inevitably have to slam on my brakes, narrowly avoiding rear-ending the car in front of me because its driver has failed to use his turn signal to indicate that he’s actually going left.
Americans’ driving has gotten so reckless that if the San Francisco Police Department ever decides to stage a sting operation at the busy intersection near my house, the city jail will be overflowing with vehicular maniacs by week’s end. And these errant deeds aren’t happening only in my town—they span a broad geographical and generational range. Putting on lipstick at a red light is bad enough, but when a driver commits such an offense in a moving car, it can result in tickets, accidents, and even fatalities. If you’re going to own an automobile, you owe it to yourself—not to mention the people you share the road with—to avoid these bad habits when you get behind the wheel.
Hang Up and Drive
By far the most widespread threat on the road, talking and texting on cell phones while driving has taken on the proportions of a nationwide epidemic. A September 2009 Washington Post article reported that close to 90 percent of Americans own cell phones, and that eight out of ten of these individuals talk on their phones while driving. Even in states that have passed laws prohibiting cell phone use without hands-free devices on the road, some drivers refuse to comply—and all that yakking has far graver consequences than overages in plan minutes.
