Ugh

Another entry in the "Why are people so effing self-centered?" book.

Yesterday afternoon, after class, I stayed over at school because I had a lot of grading. (I am done at noon on Fridays and could leave then). As I was leaving, the school buses were making their rounds. No biggie, I know the law, you stop when the bus stops and wait so the kids can get out and across the street safely.

But then, as the bus moved and I started back up, someone pulled out of an apartment complex drive and wound up in the same lane as I was. I mean, they were coming TOWARDS me and were in the wrong lane.

I did what I always do - laid on the horn and swerved. As the car veered past me, missing me by about 6", I noticed the driver was juggling her smartphone. Yeah. Apparently she was texting as she pulled out of the drive. No, apparently the text could not wait a bit longer until she got to the stop street a block up. And apparently she could not wait the extra 30 seconds in the drive to send her text.

I'm not a fan of increasingly intrusive laws like seat-belt laws and no-cell-phone laws, but, SERIOUSLY people, you have to use a little freaking common sense. Almost NO ONE can text and drive safely. So just don't do it. Just because the government isn't telling you explicitly "You will be fined for doing this" doesn't mean it's ok. They also don't have laws against sticking beans up your nose, are you going to do that next?

(And yeah, I get that some places already have no-texting-while-driving laws. We don't, or at least outside of school zones we don't. As I said, I'm not a fan of increasingly restrictive laws and would prefer people to use their God-given brains to go, "Oh. Maybe it's not smart for me to do that" but also, I'd like to see some statute where if someone causes an accident that can be linked to them texting or being on the phone, that they get double the penalty AND lose cell-phone privileges FOREVER. Kind of like multiple-times DUIs with their driver's licenses. I've had two near-miss accidents with idiots texting who swerved over into my lane and nearly hit me head on)