Retards on the road

During my commute home today, I became inspired to write about all the retards I see on the road each day. First of all, I hate commuting and especially hate the SF Bay Area traffic. I changed jobs earlier this year and sacrificed the luxury of working from home. Now I have a roughly 35 miles (one-way) commute to work every day, which sucks, but I still do it because this job does not require travel and being home with my baby boy every night is definitely worth the hassle of sitting in traffic.

Now, back to the retards on the road... this post focuses on California's new "hands-free device while driving" law. What I find annoying and amusing at the same time are the drivers who have to use their cell phone while driving and drive like retards as a result. Ever since California implemented the hands-free device requirement while driving on July 1st, 2008, I've noticed drivers who seem to be unaware of the new law or those who "try" to circumvent it.

On more than one occasion, I've been behind drivers who were driving particularly slow and end up holding up traffic while there is nobody in front of them. I'm usually eventually able to pass these "retards of the road" only to notice that they're talking on their cell phone. Prior to the implementation of the new California law, maybe I just never ran into these drivers as often, but now I see it occurring more. My guess is that these drivers are aware of the new law and they know they shouldn't be talking on their cell phones without a hands-free device, yet they still do it and convince themselves it's okay to do so if they drive extra-cautiously, which means slowing down to a crawl and pissing me off.

The situation that I observed today that inspired this post was another kind of retard. There was a guy in front of me who was chatting on his cell phone, but maybe he thought it was okay because he wasn't letting the phone touch his face. I watched him (while still paying attention to the traffic around me, of course) as he would bring the phone to his mouth to speak, then move the phone over towards his ear to listen, but without allowing the phone to make contact with his ear. I don't know if that's just how this guy typically uses his phone or if he thought he was cheating the law. I guess he could just tell a cop, "Officer, I wasn't using my cell phone, I was just waving my phone around my face!" All I can say is he looked like a retard. If you're going to break the law, then just do it.

Overall, I think this new law is good, but I doubt it's going to cause much of a change in people's driving behavior (as I've noted). When people need to be on the phone while driving, they may still need to dial phone numbers directly on the phone, which means they'll still look down to grab their phone, etc. The law apparently also does not prohibit people from texting or web browsing or using Google Maps on their phone while driving, which is probably much more dangerous.

I see a lot of bad drivers everyday, so there may be another post about "retards on the road" in the future.