Driving, Texting and Simple Math

An interesting little factoid dropped out of the ether yesterday, here.  For those too lazy to click on a link, here’s the short form:  It’s been a year since Ontario banned drivers from using cellphones and other handheld electronics behind the wheel, while driving.  Ottawa Police say they issue about 400 tickets a month to distracted drivers who often appear impaired, swerving across lanes, braking oddly, or sometimes even swerving into oncoming traffic.

Let’s see, some math here:  400 tickets, divided by 30 days is 13+ tickets a day, more or less.

Some other math, again simple math for those like me who are numerically intolerant:  30 miles per hour is the same as 44 feet per second. Divide by 3, as one-third of a second is the median reaction time of an attentive driver reacting to something while driving.  Not braking, but just seeing it and having the brain go Oh, perhaps I should stop before I run over that nun. That would be about 14 feet in round numbers.  Now add another 2.5 seconds to move the feet, apply the brakes and come to a rapid, but not panic, stop.  44 times 2.5, plus 14 gives us 124 feet, or just around 42 yards. 

An obvious need, an attentive driver, in a non-panic, buried-in-the-ABS-stop of a car going 30 miles per hour takes just under a half a football field to accomplish.

Since most people don’t drive 30 miles per hour in the city, except during rush hour, you can ramp up the math yourself.  45 miles per hour is 66 feet per second, 60 miles per hour is 88 feet per second and so on.

Now, add an extra two seconds to the reaction time, as the attentive driver is fiddling with his or her cellphone, trying to tweet that he’s got a Chicken Double Down from KFC that he’s almost finished eating.  Scratch that, add another four seconds to reaction time.  Maybe five or six seconds. 

We are now out into the realm of our mythical Nun, (Sister Mary Ignacio of Our Lady Of Perpetual Motion) not only being run over by one car, but quite possibly the other cars following, plowing into the first car, after clipping Sister Mary’s body a second, third or fourth time

The simple math of a known constant (44 feet per second equals 30 miles per hour) and a clueless hump trying to text, call or tweet on a cellphone has done for Sister Mary.  Odds are that our clueless hump will post to his Facebook that he’s in an ambulance because the fecal-matter for brains behind him ran into the back of his stopped car, after he inadvertently had a nun jump off the sidewalk, intent on martyrdom and got slammed into by an idiot on a cellphone in a truck and now he’s got whiplash.

To be concise about it, do not use your cellphone for anything while you are driving your car.  That means texting, posting, answering email, answering a call, listening to voice mail or even changing the wallpaper on your screen.  Nothing. 

Is that really so hard to understand?