I was driving along yesterday when I noticed that the guy in the next lane, about 100 yards ahead of me, was driving eratically.  Speeding up, then slowing down.  Weaving over the lines, coming into my land then across the double yellow line into the oncoming traffic lane.  It was about 8:30 in the morning. 

“Oh crap,” I thought.  He’s drunk.  My son was in the car with me, and I pointed it out to him so he would recognize the danger as well as the impact of drinking and driving.

We came to a traffic signal, and I pulled alongside.  There was a middle aged man in the car.  He had a cellphone next to his head and was talking away.  He wasn’t drunk.  He was on the phone.

Society has become intolerant of drunk driving.  Whether this reaction is appropriate is a subject for another day.  But this same society views driving with a cellphone glued to a driver’s head, illegal in New York, as an inconsequential socially acceptable act. 

Three points need to be made, and made as clearly as possible. 

1.   Cellphone use while driving is as dangerous as driving drunk. 
2.  Death at the hands of a driver on a cellphone is every bit as dead as at the hands of a drunk driver.
3.  There is no one you need to speak with so desparately that you have the right to endanger the life of another person.

The same people who will rail with inflammatory rhetoric at the evils of driving drunk will happily cruise in their SUV while talking non-stop on a cellphone.  You may not think you’re driving poorly, but neither do most drunks.  The rest of us see it pretty clearly. 

Though illegal, it is so pervasive that one would think you get free airtime when you talk while driving.  I see it constantly, and I rarely see anyone stopped for it.  The cops take it no more seriously then anyone else, apparently.  But drunk driving is morally unacceptable, so it is the target of increasingly harsher laws and penalties.  If only we would come to grips with the fact that you can cause the death of an innocent person just as easily when driving while talking on a cellphone.  Get off the phone.  Whoever it is that wants to speak with you, or with whom you want to speak, you can call them later.  Let me get home alive.