While much of the world has banned using cell phones while driving, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration admitted just over a month ago that they buried their own damning statistics related to cell phone use because they didn't want to "anger" Congress.
The recently uncovered research from 2003 shows that drivers talking on a cell phone are four times as likely to crash as other drivers, and are as likely to cause an accident as someone with a .08 blood alcohol content.
Early research shows it is at least twice as risky as talking on the phone.
So does that make texting while driving the equivalent of 'functioning' with a .16 BAC? If so, where is the freaking outrage?
To achieve a blood alcohol level of .16, a 160-pound man would have to consume seven drinks; a 120-pound woman reaches this level just after four drinks.
Apparently the one-watt wits at the NHTSA were afraid of "the House Appropriations Committee and groups that might influence it, notably voters who multitask while driving and, to a much smaller degree, the cell phone industry," according to the New York Times.
So for that we must witness one mass transit wreck after the next as drivers are punching buttons instead of looking ahead at the road or the tracks. [This study was done three years before Twitter was created.]
Is the cell phone industry so large and powerful that it can silence a government agency whose sole mission is to save lives? [kinda like the pharmaceutical lobby]
So who's in charge here?
The agency is currently being guided by Acting Deputy Administrator Ronald Medford [pictured] who hardly looks like he has the wherewithal to masturbate properly.
Four months ago he apparently replaced David Kelly who a year ago replaced Nicole Nason (a Booshie appointee) who forbade anyone at the agency — including her own Office of Communications — to talk to the media on the record.
In 2003, the agency was run by a Dr. [emergency medicine] Jeffrey Runge whose boss was Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta [yet another empty suit].
Sounds like the whole department is a bit of a train wreck.
This is going to be big. This has the possibility of class action suits by crash victims and their families against the federal government for a long time to come.
If Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. is spoiling for a fight to protect the American people he should quit his bitch-slapping exercise with the CIA and instead listen to that twisted metal and visualize screaming teenagers dying to text one another ... and taking innocents with them.
If there's an agency that's in dire need of attention it's the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. How moronic.
editor's note: On Sep. 11, 2009, Ford Motor Company stepped up and urged a ban to texting while driving. It appears Sen. Chuck Schumer has finally earned my respect by addressing a non-partisan problem. (Perhaps someone decided to heed the above screed [doubtful]).
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