Much has been written and said about driving while talking on a cell phone. In fact, there’s now a law against it in Washington.
The idea is that you cannot focus on the task at hand (avoiding an accident) if you have someone yapping in your ear. It does not appear that advocates for cell-phone-free cars differentiate between holding a phone and using a hands-free device. Although the hands-free device allows for both hands on the steering wheel, the telephone conversation somehow places our minds outside of our cars.
But what about those of us forced to drive with young children and teenagers? Is that not a distraction that warrants some legislative intervention? If we are going to remove the distraction of cell phones, why not remove our primary distraction: our children?
According to several online statisticians (you know, people who used to work, but now have free time to observe how odd and dangerous our lives are), car accidents are the leading cause of death for children between the ages of 6 and 17 (children under 6 have the added protection of a race-car-worthy car seat). So, every morning as I head out with my children in tow, I figure my 3-year-old can tell the nice police officer after we crash that his mommy was talking on the phone. The reality is more complicated than that, and to avoid ending up as some statistic, I figure I had best set the story straight.
A typical morning for me involves driving my 14-year-old to school, because she is too cool to ride the bus, and my 3-year-old to daycare, because he is too young to ride the bus. While en route, my precocious teenager is singing me her latest song or chatting away about what her friends are up to or shoving her IPod into my ear to listen to Ozzy Osbourne bark at the moon. It is daytime, I remind her, and I cannot bark at the moon while driving.
But, my 3-year-old can bark — loudly I discover — at the moon, at the trees, at his sister. His antics are so funny that my eyes fill up with tears I am laughing so hard. But no worries, I know the route to their schools by heart and I know that the fuzzy shape in front of us is a UPS truck so I keep my distance.
Once my daughter is dropped off, I am left to fend for myself and my son. He sits in the back, and he has this incessant need to have me pick up the toy truck he just dropped, or pass him his morning snack, or open up his morning snack that in frustration he insists on tossing at the back of my head should I ignore him. In desperation, I bring out my phone.
My cell phone is my only excuse to quiet down my children and it allows me to focus more on my driving as a result. Oddly enough, my son respects the fact that I am on the phone and grants me a reprieve from his usual target practice. If you take away my cell phone, can you please also take away my children?
I think a State-mandated taxi service for toddlers would do the trick, and my teenager can walk to school. This way I can keep my eyes and mind on the road. Of course, failing that, I could just hand my phone to my toddler. His English isn’t very good yet, but he can bark at the moon.
