Dead Baby Alert

Yep, that's a spoiler alright.

At least it is if you're the type of person who is disappointed to know in advance that this video contains, among other things, images of a dead child.

For the rest of us, it's more like forewarned is forearmed.

This video is an excerpt from a 30 minute film co-produced by the Tredegar Comprehensive School and the Gwent Police. It is a graphic and disturbing illustration of the consequences of distracted driving.



There are a million potential distractions in your car that you can't do much about. Crying babies, barking dogs, arguing siblings. Those things are part of life. But no matter how cacophonous screaming kids can be, they do not usually compel you to take your eyes off the road.

The car stereo does. Back in the day, everybody knew someone, or knew someone who knew someone who was in a wreck because they were fiddling around with the radio and took their eyes off the road for too long. Or maybe the driver of the other car did. Either way, there was a wreck and you heard about it.

But that was just the car stereo. And 20 years ago, that's all there was. Today we bring other, more insidious distractions into the car.

Blackberrys and cellphones.

No matter how brilliant of a texter you are, even if you can text without looking, there is one thing you cannot do. You cannot read texts and e-mails without looking at something which is not the road in front of you. You cannot keep one eye on the road while reading with the other. Sorry, not possible. We are just not designed that way.

So what do we do instead? What is our workaround for this problem?

Simple. We get into our cars and get up to speed. Maybe 65, 75 miles an hour. Seriously, no one drives 55, not you, not anyone. Then we take a teeny, tiny device out of our pocket or purse. This teeny, tiny device has a teeny, tiny screen, and teensy, weensy keys which are about 1/4 of the size of your pinkie fingernail. Isn't that the cutest thing! And now, every few seconds, we will switch our focus back and forth from the road and cars all around us, to the 3 inch screen in front of us.

This sounds like an excellent idea so far.

There are two basic techniques one can use going forward from this point. If you're a Blackberry kid, you're accustomed to typing with both thumbs. So you'll press the Berry up against the top of the steering wheel, at the 12:00 position, support the back with your index and middle fingers, type with your thumbs, and grasp the wheel with your ring and pinkie fingers.

Out of 10 fingers you've got a full 4 of them on the wheel. Atta boy, sport!

Now this sounds like a good idea, because the Berry is right up near the windshield so it'll be easy to glance back and forth between the road and the screen, right? Your eyes barely have to move at all, right? You can even use your peripheral vision to sense the cars in front of you, right?

So when your Spidey-sense detects a car cutting in front of you, the 4 weakest fingers that you possess are going to be able to quickly and securely steer you out of harms way, in a split second.

Right?

The other technique is the "one hander". Used mostly by veteran texters, you will cradle the phone in the palm of one hand and manipulate the keys with your thumb, while grasping the wheel firmly in the other.

This also sounds like a good idea. If you held the phone out at arms length in front of you, right up by the windshield. But you're not gonna do that. You're gonna hold the phone down near your lap, the back of your hand supported by your thigh. So now you look through the windshield for a while, then eyes completely away from the road down to your lap for more seconds than you realize, then CRASH! YOU'RE DEAD!

I think we all would agree that texting or e-mailing while driving is not a great idea. I admit I've done it, usually in the morning when I'm running late for work. Which is usually always. But it is a terrible, awful, dangerous behavior. I won't be doing it again after today.

So why do we do it? What is so compelling about our messages, or the thought that we might miss something that can't wait till we get there? Tell me, please. Is any of it worth dying for?

Screw that. You can die for it. You can kill yourself if you want to. But killing your family, or friends? Stealing children from parents, or mothers and fathers from babies? That's fucked up, and so supremely selfish that if you do it, you deserve to die. Hope you do.

Have a nice day.