The electronic leash

I hate my cell phone.

I don’t like the feeling that I can be tracked down at any time, anywhere. Sometimes I feel like the damn thing is like one of those electronic surveillance devices they slap around your ankle when you’re under house arrest.

But I don’t know how I got along without one. It makes my job so much easier. Journalism is about 80 percent phone calls, and I don’t have to be chained to a desk to make them. My cell phone makes me more productive.

Come January, I’ll have to get a hands-free device to use it in the truck. Oregon, like other states is trying to crack down on cell phone distractions while driving. This may be a cosmetic effort. There’s evidence that it’s the talking itself that is the big distraction, not holding the phone (though dropping your cell phone in the car prompts an almost instinctive move to grab it instead of paying attention to the road. That’s a crash waiting to happen).

Somehow I doubt that the new Oregon law will be stringently enforced, which makes it kind of moot. The urge to use the phone is too strong unless the consequences are huge.

Maybe they should be, especially for texting while driving. In Britain, texting while driving is a serious crime and if you hurt somebody, you will go to prison. It’s treated more or less like drunk driving.

Cell phones are here to stay until they are supplanted by some more sophisticated technology. That means we’ll have to put up with people yakking on their phone in the grocery line and other annoyances.

Texting habits will cnt 2 dstry wrtn eng lng LOL.

But maybe it’s a good idea to make the roads communications free zones. At least ban texting and  enforce the ban with strict penalties. Nobody can argue that texting while driving isn’t a big public safety concern (can they?).

As for cell phone use, I try to be good about that, but I’m probably bad as everybody else. After all, I have a GOOD REASON to be using the phone in the car.

I’ll do the hands free thing in January, though I’d rather take that damn thing (and yours, too) and chuck it out the truck window at 80 mph.

Wait. That’s illegal.

Jim Cornelius, Editor