ummm...everyone texts while driving Josh. don't kid yourself. that's what red lights are for. only fools text while actively driving.

what's next, outlawing mp3 players in cars (plugged into stereo)? reading/writing a short text, even while actively driving, is about as involved as scrolling through your ipod to find an album to listen to. in fact, texting requires less of my visual attention.

I just got my "I (heart) Viaduct" bumper sticker last night at one of those King County History museums in the westend. So So Cool. Thank you slog for making me love legislation about roadways. ok, laters, one more hour of pouring concrete.

I saw a woman eating a bowl of cereal while steering with her elbows once.

I swear on my first day here after I moved from SF I saw one man reading a newspaper while driving (it was stop-and-go but still) a FAT woman eating a burger with one hand and drinking soda with the other, and a skinny woman in a SUV eating yogurt with a spoon and driving with her elbows.

Since then I have seen a suit in a jaguar talking on the phone while eating a burrito, and some drummer asshole with a drumstick in one hand and the other on the steering wheel.

Drivers here all either fucking suck, or are fucking crazy.

Hey, as long as she stopped before doing it....

... you DO stop before texting people while biking, don't you, ECB?

Oh, BIKING! I thought ECB texts when she is bikini-ing. I am very tired.

#6, maybe that's why she fell off her bike and scraped herself up a few weeks ago...

They should give us bounties for turning in cellphone junkies driving under the influence, then pedestrians might not get mowed over by the SUV crowd.

Or at least ECB could wear a bikini.

Both would be good.

As the headset-vs.-handheld debate and research has shown, it's not the phone in your hand that is dangerous, it's the conversation that distracts you. It's why the phone is different from the radio, etc. Texting allows drivers to interact with a thing, and not a person, and in many cases keep their eyes on the road (depending on how good they are.) Banning this activity (which if done by touch would be near impossible to catch anyway) makes no sense if scrolling through your iPod or reading and interacting with the display on the radio is still legal.

I like to text, gloss lips, change shoes and finger dan paulus's chest hair, simultaniously, while driving.

I'm with @10 on this one. I text while driving occasionally. I can also type without looking at the bloody thing and I can drop it without a second thought if things around me get complicated. It's marginally more distracting (for me) than switching songs on the cd player or figuring out which side the hole in the coffee cup is on.

Remind me not to get behind @11 ...

But @10 and @12 are both accidents waiting to happen too.

can we just ban driving?

If talking on your cell phone were really as dangerous as drunk driving, none of us would be alive. I don't really care either way, but the anti talking-while-driving crowd is being willfully dishonest.

I could easily be wrong about this, Josh, but I think pretty much every law regulating driving also applies to cyclists, except for the ones applying to the vehicle rather than the operator.

Having been nearly clipped in crosswalks by many a cell-phone-preoccupied driver, despite my having the right of way, I can attest that sniggles is completely wrong.

It's just that pedestrians and other drivers can act defensively given predictable movement patterns, and cell phone wielding drivers are simply inattentive, rather than not possessing motor ability due to intoxication, and thus acting erratically.