There was a news item on yesterday’s Breakfast programme that was guaranteed to send me off to work in an irritable mood. It seems that drivers have too many gadgets in their vehicles and all those GPS recievers, hands free mobile phones and CD players cause them to take their eyes and concentration off the road causing them to crash:
“Almost half of drivers admit they have been distracted by in-car gadgets, sometimes even causing them to crash, according to a survey.
One in five of 1,500 drivers quizzed by Privilege Insurance admitted swerving out of their lane while changing CDs or fiddling with the instruments panel.
Some drivers said manufacturers should limit the number of gadgets in cars.”
You see? There we go again. Our dumbed down society has become so incapable of self-determination, personal responsibility and free thought that someone else has to take responsibility. Gadgets do not cause accidents – drivers who are too stupid to use them responsibly do.
I like my gadgets. My GPS with voice prompt makes navigating unfamiliar roads so much simpler. No more trying to pull over and fumble around with a map and subsequently trying to memorise what I’ve just looked at. No more relying on seeing misleading signposts – just listen to the prompts and follow. Yet because some imbeciles who probably shouldn’t have driving licenses anyway can’t cope, the cry goes out that we all should be restricted. Maybe ZANU Labour would like to pass another social control law – after all, it would just be another extension to what they’ve been doing of late. They want to know where we are going, why not control how we go, too?
There is a voice of reason, though:
“But road accident consultant Doug Boulton said the decision to use gadgets should be left to drivers.”
Quite. There is also something else to bear in mind. Our roads are becoming increasingly littered with road furniture; speed humps, traffic calming, irrelevant road signage, bollards and so on. Get rid of that lot, and you will reduce distraction and force drivers to take some personal responsibility. Oh, but of course, personal responsibility is verboten in todays sanitised state-controlled thought-crime-free society…
At least they are talking about driver distraction as the cause of accidents. This is one step up from what normally goes for debating road safety, simply claiming anyone breaking the (arbitary) speed limit will instantly crash.
I wonder what happened to that experiment in West London where they were going to clear a busy road of ‘clutter’ ?