BY BILLY PITTS
For Ripon Society
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood deserves praise for focusing public attention on distracted driving.
The market today is flooded with electronic devices that can be used in motor vehicles and millions of motorists are using them with reckless abandon, putting themselves, their passengers and their fellow travelers in danger.
We’ve all seen these accidents waiting to happen. A driver holding up traffic while he or she, with head down, finishes a text message, a car swerving into another lane of traffic while the driver reads an email, or a driver recklessly maneuvering through traffic with one hand on the wheel and the other performing that infamous one-handed dialing exercise.
Secretary LaHood has seen the future of unsafe driving with even more use of cell phones, radios, iPods, GPS navigation devices, TV screens, back-up cameras and yet-invented electronic devices, all of which distract even the most agile drivers from watching the road.