Jeff Kaley
DUNCAN — Well, it’s happening again: 21st Century Technoman thinks he’s finally getting a chance to chill, but along comes another distress signal from planet Earth.
Technoman planned to spend some time stretched out in a double-wide hammock, with a cool libation, some fine music and Mrs. Technoman cooing lovingly at his side. After many hectic days on technopatrol, he was going to get in some quality time.
But, noooo! The sirens are blaring and the lights on the Technoman Help Line are ablaze.
You know, Technoman lives to serve humanity in its struggle to avoid being drawn into technology servitude. The Technoman Code is simple: Technology is necessary, but in the Modern World, technology is moving too fast for most humans to keep up.
Therefore, Technoman chooses to control the pace at which technology takes over his life, and it behooves him to extend the same service to others of the species.
But sometimes, y’all make it difficult to want to help. And this is one of those times.
To wit: It’s beyond absurdity to think Americans need legislation to keep them from text messaging while driving. No one needs a college degree to realize that sending a text message while operating a motor vehicle is a graduate class in lunacy, do they?
It’s just plain COMMON SENSE that if you’re encased in a ton or two of metal that’s hurtling down the highway at 75 MPH, or even if you’re just going 25 on Fifth Street in Duncan, the last thing you should be doing is texting.
Well, Technoman doesn’t like name-calling, but apparently there are some people who are just that plain d-u-m-b!
As Technoman speaks, there’s a group of U.S. senators proposing a bill that would force states to pass laws against texting while driving or risk losing a healthy chunk of federal highway funding.
This seems akin to proposing laws to prevent people from sticking a metal fork in a toaster or drinking gasoline or trusting Michael Vick to baby-sit your Labrador.
People aren’t that stooopeeed, are they?
Well, yes, they are.
A couple weeks ago in Lockport, N.Y., a truck driver crashed through a fence, clipped a house and plunged his flatbed into a swimming pool as he was trying to talk on one cell phone and text on another.
Dopey? Of course. But that’s a trivial instance of texting stupidity compared to the guy in Utah, who pleaded guilty in February to two counts of negligent homicide for a texting-while-driving wreck that killed two rocket scientists (which — forgive Technoman — you don’t have to be to realize the guy from Utah showed appallingly bad judgment).
Prosecutors subpoenaed that guy’s phone records after state troopers reported he continued texting while being questioned at the crash site.
Then there was the train engineer in Los Angeles, who was texting when he caused an accident that killed himself and 24 passengers last September. And there was a member of the British Parliament who was expelled from the Labour Party, after this numbskull was texting when he hit another car and killed its driver.
People have been ticketed for texting while driving a motorcycle, while operating a school athletic team bus and while pulling out of a grade school parking lot after picking up their kids.
All this leads Technoman to reach this conclusion: Texting while driving is becoming the new DWI (or DWT, if you will) because human beings are so easily led into becoming enslaved by technogizmos.
People of all ages become transfixed with every new wrinkle in technology evolution, and it goes beyond just having to have the newest, coolest form of Blackberry or Blueberry or Gooberberry. Becoming a technodroid causes people to lose common sense and step into the gray area of what’s right and wrong. (Not to mention losing civility and the hands-on, eye-to-eye human interaction that results in sympathy and empathy within the species.)
But don’t worry, 21st Century Technoman doesn’t really mind giving up an idyllic day off to try to save you from yourselves.
And no, this column wasn’t written on Technoman’s Blackberry while he was driving on Highway 81.
— Jeff Kaley is editor of the Waurika News-Democrat and a Duncan Banner columnist. He can be reached at 580-228-2316 or e-mailed at jeff.kaley@duncanbanner.com.
