[Posted Sep 5th 2006 12:48AM]

Yes, this is one of those personal sob stories:

Coming from someone whose wife was in the middle of a five (yes, 5!) car pile up on an exit ramp off of I285 here in Georgia, I say more power to them! The person driving the car that rear-ended my wife was on their cellphone at the time. And was traveling at over 60 miles per hour before meeting the dead-stopped (and beautiful ;P) rearend of my wifes car.

Moving to the point of banning all use of cellphones while driving, I have three points to make: 1. in and around Atlanta (replace Atlanta with the name of local metropolis), most people seem to have their phones glued to their head and 2. the police seem to have a hard enough time caring about other meaningless (probably meaningful ones as well) infractions to crack down upon. Lastly, hardly anyone around here seems to pay attention while driving anyway, it's a wonder how some people possess a license let alone a working brain to operate a vehicle past their driveway.

By the way, yes I do use a phone while driving, but I chose a Nokia 6270 with probably the best speakerphone setup. I just answer with one button, press another button to switch to speaker, and then throw the phone where ever I please, all the while having maybe once looked to see who was calling.

Since my first Motorola DPC-550 when I was 16 years old to over 11 years later with my current Nokia 6270, I never once had a single incident related my use of cellphones while driving. I can only wish for a day when more people realize that driving is a skill that you learn and not an automatic ability.

Funny to think that the same people who have a problem communicating a blinker or paying attention to other drivers, probably have some of the best verbal communication and social skills.

/longwinded_rant=off