Ooops. What I meant to say was that because Americans choose to text or talk while driving, Americans cause 1.2 million traffic accidents per year. [1] Many of these accidents cause serious injuries and deaths. As the linked article states, many of these tragedies are caused by people who are yapping or texting while on-the-job for an American business.
I’m waiting to hear our politicians announce a war on cell phone use while driving–an all-out war employing check points, high tech surveillance and violations of fundamental civil liberties.
This war won’t happen, though, because these injuries, like 99% of the problems America currently faces (these things include wildly out-0f-control obesity [2], repealing Glass-Steagall [3] and gutting the First Amendment [4]) are self-inflicted. Further, our calculus for deciding public policy is mostly geared to finding an other to blame. In America, a tragedy caused by someone deemed to be an outsider is 1,000 times more “serious” than a tragedy caused by an American. The needless injuries and deaths due to cell phone use constitute Exhibit A.
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