Honolulu Lite
Honolulu Lite
One more call to stop
Driving While StupidThis may come as a shock to readers who understand my abhorrence to government overreaching into our private lives, but I actually support ticketing idiots who talk on cellular phones while driving. Actually, I support them being shot, especially if they happen to be in front of me.
But because Hawaii lawmakers are not quite ready to impose capital punishment for even extraordinarily imbecilic traffic offenses, I guess we have to go with the more wimpy tactic of banning the use of cell phones by drivers.
Banning the phones won't work, by the way, because cell phone use by automobile drivers is not the problem. Automobile drivers are the problem. We have to face facts here: Most drivers do not belong behind the wheel of a vehicle.
The driver's licensing test, as we have pointed out before, is way too easy. The fact that you take the written part of the test with a crayon is a hint. Another hint is that instead of asking you serious questions about physics, the velocity of heavy moving objects and deceleration stability data, vis-à-vis, how much room do you need to safely stop your car without hitting the one in front of you, you moron ... instead of those questions, they ask you what you should do when you come across a railroad track crossing the roadway.
The answer to the railroad question, as we have disclosed here before, is, you stop, look at your map and discover that you are probably in Kansas, not Kahala, you nitwit, since there are no trains in Hawaii other than that little tourist line out in Ewa Beach.
BECAUSE LICENSE tests don't ask the tough questions, we end up with a lot of drivers on the road who should not be operating an electric can opener, let alone a 5,000-pound mass of screaming metal.
But they do. And not only do they drive these machines of death, they do so while talking on cell phones, eating three-course meals, plucking their eyebrows, picking their noses and smacking their kids in the back seat, all concurrently.
They also conduct all these enterprises while stopped on freeway onramps, usually in front of me. (Can I make one more plug for traffic-related capital punishment?)
The problem is not that these drivers use cell phones or groom themselves in inappropriate places, it is that these drivers are stupid. And years ago I suggested a new law along the line of DWI (Driving While Intoxicated) which was DWS (Driving While Stupid.) Enforcement of this law would have cleared the roadways of a majority of drivers.
So now our lawmakers are going at the problem of stupid drivers in a piecemeal fashion, addressing only a small element of their stupidity, the use of cell phones. OK. Fine. But the stupidity of drivers is pernicious and vast, and one day it must be addressed. Disarming them one electronic implement at a time is not going to carry the day.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com