Your Freedom Ends Where It Begins To Impinge On My Freedom
(If you’re short on time, skip to the last paragraph for a paradigm shifting experience)
Your freedom ends where it begins to impinge on my freedom. It’s one of the pilars of our legal system. You are free to do many, many things in America. But when the freedom our laws provide to you begin to impinge on the freedom our laws provide to me, that’s where you’re not free to act any more.
For example, drink as much alcohol as you want. You are free to do so if you’re older than 21. There is no legal limit to the amount of alcohol you can drink. That’s one of the freedoms our law provides to you.
However, the second you drink to much alcohol and get behind the wheel of a vehicle, you’re impinging on my freedoms, on my rights to a safe road and perhaps even life and the pursuit of happiness. So that’s where your freedom to drink ends.
Two recent articles in the New York Times have addressed the practice of using cell phones while driving and text messaging while driving. You don’t need studies to tell you that these practices are dangerous. You see it every day, but one study is particularly illuminating.
It found that in braking tests at 70 mph, drivers with a blood-alcohol level of .08 (legally drunk in Florida), stopped four feet further down the road than sober drivers while texting drivers stopped 70 further than they should have.
Texting and driving is significantly more dangerous than drinking and driving. I’m tired of moving over in my lane to avoid swerving texters. I’m tired of being held up in traffic by people on their phones going 10 mph below the speed limit because they’re distracted. It’s time to outlaw this practice and make our roads safer.
The problem, according to one of the NY Times pieces is that while everyone recognizes the danger, they don’t think they are part of the problem so they continue driving distractedly. The article cited studies showing that the same people who complained about phones distracting drivers rated themselves as being safe drivers even while using a phone in their car.
The absurdity of the public’s opinion on this is readily apparent, but sadly not at all surprising. Nearly everyone rates themselves as being of above average intelligence, but if everyone were above average, who would be below. We tend to see ourselves more favorably than we really are.
So that’s the most important problem – we don’t think we’re the problem so we’re unlikely to give up our supposed “right” to text while driving. But it’s not your right – you are not free to drive distracted because it impinges on my freedom.
Another problem as today’s Times points out is that our own government is covering up evidence that cell phones are dangerous instruments when used in a car. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration caved in to Congressional pressure and withheld hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers.
The outrageous of this is so grandiose that I’m saving it for another blog post entirely. For now, I’m addressing problem one only. Get off your high horse. While you may be of above average intellignce, there’s no way you’re a safe driver while you’re on your cell phone and especially while you’re texting.
For years I was one of those people who thought I was different – safe. I would complain about drivers distracted by cell phones but I would still text and drive. Then in another post here I describe my transition away from texting and driving. What I found was surprising and holds far-reaching consequences for our perceptions and in particular, road rage. When I stopped texting and driving, I limited my texting to times when I was stopped at a red light. I found that on my 25-minute drive to and from work everyday, I was never stopped at a red light long enough to type an intelligible text. I could get one word at a red light, but never more than three. Try this sometime and it will change your perception of how much time you spend in traffic. It’s not much.
Explore posts in the same categories: Auto Accidents, negligence