Cell phone use for either talking or texting in Billings Montana will be banned starting October 31, 2010 if all goes as planned by the Billings City Council. Drivers will be allowed to use their hands free devises.
Yesterday morning when I was at the intersection of Wicks and Main, I looked to my left (3 lanes of traffic) and there is a driver animatedly engaged in a cell phone conversation,
looked to my right and the driver is looking down, with thumbs a flying over the keys of their phone texting,
looked up to the people in cross traffic making a left hand turn in front of me talking sternly into their cell phone,
looked across the intersection to the person in the turning lane with a phone to their ear talking as well.
This is fabulous for the cell phone industry, multitasking when in the car driving just makes the demand for this service very valuable.
Not so sure this is good for the driving public though, here's my case in point.
What if us baby boomers, who have adapted to this portable phone technology, continue to embrace the talking and texting while driving as just a part of our wonderful ability to multitask in a very busy environment.
Say we loose our hearing, and have to concentrate harder on listening to the conversation on the phone, (instead of the traffic around us), and we also loose some of our abilities to be supermen and women (multitask kings and queens), and we meet at the intersections. I just think this could be catastrophic at an intersection like the one I was at yesterday morning.
I think it's a good thing to decrease the ability to use the phone while driving.
It's also a good excuse to be able to say I don't text or talk on my cell phone while driving, for safety reasons.
It's better, when you're a business person who uses their cell phone for business, to be "ready, willing and able" to talk and give your full attention to your clients; that's not while driving!
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