It's Been One Of Those Days.... Rant And Yea I Am A Bit ****ed.

Rant warning. Rant warning.

I know it's been a tough day when I no longer have a filter for my mouth and I say what I am thinking. Yea I am trying to to relax and then a parasite invades my domain. Ugh!

Let me set the scene. Washington DC loop. Rush hour 5pm traffic. Raining so hard you can barely see 10 feet in front of your hood. 3.5 hours to go the 60 miles around DC. I almost get side swiped not once but twice by 2 different big truck. Wtf?! And when I got you beside them and seen what they were doing I was livid. They almost hit me. That means an hour or two of paperwork and dealing with police IN the rain ALL BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO FOOL WITH THEIR PHONE! One was watching videos of some sort. The other was either making a phone call of testing. The point is they were TOUCHING THEIR phone and left their Lane of travel. REALLY?! Omfg.

Are we saddening a bunch of teenagers going on vacation? Possibly. I must apologize cause I thought we were supposed to be professional drivers not some 13 years kids in the back of the 'rents cars picking my nose while I watching someone on the Internet and drool over a life I can never have cause I can't stop playing with my freaking phone!

I guess somewhere in their mind it's OK to drive an 80,000 lbs' of metal down the road while weaving in and out of there Lane while watching the latest boy and fad. Then I guess it's equally OK for someone to blind fold themselves and drive down the road plus randomly shot at people. Both equally as dangerous but one is done under the guise of being a professional.

Testing or playing or whatever someone is doing with their phone while driving is becoming.... No has become an epidemic. It's out of control. Yep it has or why else does almost every electric sign coming into major cities give a death number and then says" Don't text and drive" if it was not a very big problem? Deaths each year in cars due to dwi/dui have been replaced with texting/playing with phone deaths. Wtf?!

Last time I was in Nashville the sign read "699 death this year. Don't text and drive" I can almost bet 99% of those, if not all of those, were four wheelers. Mostly kids. How can the government not see this as a problem? How have they not made it mandatory for all car to be equipped with a device that kills the cell signal as long as the car is in motion? Trucks also!

Not often I go on a rant like this but I guess it will have to do since I believe murder of stupid people is still illegal.... Isn't it?

Sheesh. All you had to say was D.C. Loop and that would have been bad enough. That is an awful route. Sorry to hear you had to deal with members of the lesser kind. I saw two car trailer drivers harass the crap out of a UPS triples driver today, while he was struggling with the wind and whiplash. He was recovering pretty well, considering the wind. They looked like they were deliberately teaming up and forcing him over, so they could cut close around him and move on. Unreal. It looked like the UPS driver was having a tough enough time, let alone fellow truckers giving him a hard time too.

-mountain girl

That sucks! I see why my post might have touched a nerve as well :)

Phones are just the most recent thing, distracted drivers are distracted no matter what hold their attention. I don't buy those statistics either because unless there is an eye witness or they find a half written text on a phone that somehow survives the accident how do they know? I've only been in 2 accidents in my life but both times my phone was in a compartment near the dash and once it ended up under the seat, the other it was in the back seat. My step father just got rear ended last month at a red light for a cross walk, he was stopped over 30 seconds and 3 cars back from the crosswalk and the guy hit him going 40 without even slowing down and gets out asking why the f... He stopped? Some people just don't pay attention.

I've had a cell phone for 18 years, as soon as I got a license my parents bought it to keep track of me lol. I've texted and made calls my fair share while driving over those 18 years and I've never even come close to having a wreck because of that. I've also never drive down the road in a rain storm watching a video... I also think the laws against texting and driving are making it worse. It's one thing to get a text and bring the phone up near your line of sight, quickly glance over, read a few words, back on the road, etc all while keeping everything in your peripheral but now I see people driving trying to hide their phones and they actually look down completely losing sight of the road from any peripheral vision and check their phone. The law needs to be against any distraction but that's harder to enforce.

The real epidemic is the lack of common sense in this world and I wish I knew how to fix that issue...

That sucks! I see why my post might have touched a nerve as well :)

Phones are just the most recent thing, distracted drivers are distracted no matter what hold their attention. I don't buy those statistics either because unless there is an eye witness or they find a half written text on a phone that somehow survives the accident how do they know? I've only been in 2 accidents in my life but both times my phone was in a compartment near the dash and once it ended up under the seat, the other it was in the back seat. My step father just got rear ended last month at a red light for a cross walk, he was stopped over 30 seconds and 3 cars back from the crosswalk and the guy hit him going 40 without even slowing down and gets out asking why the f... He stopped? Some people just don't pay attention.

I've had a cell phone for 18 years, as soon as I got a license my parents bought it to keep track of me lol. I've texted and made calls my fair share while driving over those 18 years and I've never even come close to having a wreck because of that. I've also never drive down the road in a rain storm watching a video... I also think the laws against texting and driving are making it worse. It's one thing to get a text and bring the phone up near your line of sight, quickly glance over, read a few words, back on the road, etc all while keeping everything in your peripheral but now I see people driving trying to hide their phones and they actually look down completely losing sight of the road from any peripheral vision and check their phone. The law needs to be against any distraction but that's harder to enforce.

The real epidemic is the lack of common sense in this world and I wish I knew how to fix that issue...

Yea. Baseball bat to the kneecap is against the law also.

Nothing can really be done about folks and their bad driving habits so you just got to go with it.

Imagine if there was some federal law passed requiring all cars to be equipped with phone scramblers. What about the passengers that want to make phone calls? Will we have to stop the vehicle and create another hazard along the shoulder of the highway every time anyone riding along needs to make a phone call?

There would be illegal blackmarket type devices made and sold, "pro-anti phone scramblers" so people can override the vehicles antiphone system that your wife will use while ducking under the dash, all squished up into a ball so that a passing police car will not see her.

We are talking a 1984 police state here!

I know it is all just a rant you were making, but it just got me to pondering the idea.

Oooo. Don't be touching any more nerves tonight, Jay B. LOL. Let the man sleep. LOL. He had to deal with 'tupid people today. CDL drivers are governed by Federal Law whether they're driving a commercial vehicle or not. As soon as I got behind the wheel of a tractor trailer for the first time, I forgot phones of any kind even existed. There is too dang much to be responsible for, while driving one of those things and no commercial driver has any business texting while driving. I don't care how good you think you are. Using a blue tooth is pushing it.

-mountain girl

Once you have your CDL , you will be breaking the law, texting and driving even in your own personal vehicle, no matter what state you're in.

-mountain girl

Heh Justin that makes me think of everything the government tries to stop. War on drugs, war on terror, now the war on cell phones in the car. It always gets worse. As I said I've seen much worse distracted driving from people trying to hide their distracted driving lol. It's illegal to speed too and we see how well that works. Here in Tucson they put up all these red light cameras because of accidents and the accidents went up lol. I don't trust the government to solve any problems, just create more.

I'm afraid the more I see the more I believe the majority of people are just stupid. There is no common sense anymore, it's almost like a super power these days.

Excuse me i find that very very biased!!! why trucker has uncle sam on their six when us 4 wheelers are being dumb being crazy / senseless????!!!!!!!!!!!!

not fair no justice

I know mg, I've held a class C CDL for 5 years. Our state passed the law for texting and driving too so now I see everyone trying to hide it, driving even worse heh. The law is stupid though, I've seen people driving with books in their laps reading, maps over the steering wheel, putting on makeup, shaving, you name it. It's not like if some miracle happened and every phone shut off inside a car those deaths would go away. They would just get attributed to something else. Stupid people are stupid. Our saying at work was "make something idiot proof and you will find a bigger idiot".