This morning, during the brief Cleveland Avenue leg of my daily trek to Easton, I noticed a car that had three bumper stickers. There was a W’04 sticker, which would indicate that the driver was a Republican of the flaming variety, an ambiguous war-related sticker which read (not-verbatim) “Large is the Gulf of an Unnecessary War,” and the clever “Drive Now, Talk Later,” a piece of anti-technology doctrine that may as well have been ripped from The Unabomber’s Manifesto.
I couldn't resist the opportunity to quickly sketch the driver's face as I saw it through his rear-view mirror.
I’ve always looked statistics like “Vehicular Crashes from 2002-2006″ like a random numbers chart. (On an unrelated note, my disapproval at the way that a ’7′ looks on a roll of dice has influenced me to search for a bumper sticker that says “Roll Lower Than 6 or Higher Than 8!”) Let’s face it, cars are going to crash, people are going to die, and their loved ones are going to campaign against any factor that slightly affects the intrinsic risk in driving a vehicle capable of moving at 100+ miles per hour. If I didn’t know from firsthand experience that making a call on a cell phone during a car crash is infeasible, I would even suggest squeezing in a last call to your spouse/mother/sister/child in the event that a fatal car crash is inevitable. (Not only will you redeem yourself, you can have the opportunity give meaning to the somewhat useless “Voice Dial” feature on most of today’s cell phones.)
If it came down to it, I could probably initiate a NASA rocket launch sequence, send a flirtatious text, and choose the next song on my Microsoft Zune at the saaaame time… all while driving on 270 with a Spaten Optimator nestled in my lap. Out of respect for my God given multi-tasking talents, try to excuse my stance on bumper stickers like this or laws like these.
Interestingly enough, the bumper sticker (especially in Ohio where driving with a handheld cell phone is still legal) is harder to ignore than the litigation. The idea of the bumper sticker somewhat legitimizes a cause. If I saw a car driving in front of me that had “Drive Now, Talk Later” spray-painted on its hood, I would think it was the view of an isolated moron. The fact that there is a market for a similarly worded bumper sticker indicates that said morons are out of isolation and have organized some sort of cult that worships intense, singe-minded focus to their current task.
"Move left foot now... Move right foot later!"
In at least a few states, according to the above link (see:these), the technophobes have won. To me, that means two things: a.) My virtuoso multi-tasking performances may soon be limited to work, and b.) This guy has a big smile on his face.
