The first Morning Jolt of the week features a Senate-race poll roundup, the potential breakup of the United Kingdom, and then this observation about how selfish behavior fuels the nanny state:
How You Checking Your Phone at a Red Light Assists the Nanny State
Dear driver in front of me of the left-turn-only lane,
It appears you’re reading this message on a smart phone during a pause that began as a red light, but became a green light while you were staring at this phone instead of the traffic light in front of you. And now we’re behind you, honking our horns.
I have a feeling you’ve been here before. You’re familiar with this intersection, right? This is the left-turn lane, and we have a green arrow for maybe twenty seconds, tops. If everyone’s paying attention, we can get six cars through, maybe seven if we really push it and slip through in the closing seconds of yellow. We’re all sitting here, trying to get to the preschool. We all have roughly the same drop-off time. We all want to get on with our day, just like you do.
I understand the temptation to check your smartphone. We all know that this is a long light — if you miss the green or yellow arrow, you’re sitting there for another two or three minutes. I can tell you’re not checking your rear-view mirror, but if you did, you would see a lot of us back here.
Those of us back here are sitting here — weekday morning after weekday morning — because you feel the need to check your smartphone when you’re the first car in line in the left-turn lane. And with frustratingly metronomic regularity, you’re looking at your phone when the light turns green, and those of us back here have to honk our horns to alert you to the fact that the light has changed, and you and maybe one or two cars get through, and the rest of us are waiting another couple minutes for the lights to cycle again.
This is a basic matter of consideration for your fellow human beings. Yes, it is boring to just look at a traffic light. But you’re prioritizing your need to interrupt just a few minutes of boredom over our need to get moving when the light turns green.
In Virginia, texting while driving now gets you a $125 fine, $250 for a second offense. It was recently upgraded to a “a primary offense, which means police can pull you over if they suspect you of texting while driving.” But we don’t really need to throw the book at the people unlucky or unwise enough to check their phones while behind the wheel in front of a cop. We just need people to not look at their farshtunken phone while driving, or while sitting at a red light!
Government and police enforcement are not really needed to deal with you, driver in front of me. It just requires you to use a little better judgment and think about the people behind you. It’s a lot easier to preserve personal liberties when people practice personal responsibility. The touchy-feely communitarians always want to put the needs of the community first — well, their chosen definition of the community’s needs first — above the rights of the individual. Their instinct to try to make a rule, regulation, homeowners’-association bylaw, or law for every single circumstance is a pain in the tush, but they have an easier case to make every time you behave in a manner that prizes only your interests and needs and disregards everyone else’s.
Unfortunately, every time you delay the rest of us, you create a problem that Authenticity Woods busybodies will want to turn into a crime.
Green means “go”, pal.