Posted on 12/27/2009 3:30:09 PM PST by Saije
Vinnie Sorce knew something was wrong when he saw a police officer pull into the driveway. He immediately sent his three children, two boys from a previous marriage and a little girl with his fiancee, to their rooms so he could talk to the officer outside.
"Time just froze," he said.
Sorce's fiancee, Stacey Stubbs, had headed to Phoenix for a doctor's appointment.
She never made it.
A Ford pickup truck hit Stubbs' rented PT Cruiser head-on on an isolated stretch of road near Lake Pleasant, killing her instantly. The other driver, Ashley Miller, 19, was thrown from the truck and later pronounced dead at a hospital.
Sorce later went to the hospital to identify Stubbs' body.
"You could see her nose was broken, and her fingers were all crushed, like she had gripped the wheel," Sorce said.
A familiar pain flooded back. Sorce had lost his first wife, Lisa, to cancer eight years before.
"The hardest thing I thought I'd ever have to do was tell the boys their mom had died," he said. "All of a sudden I had to do it again."
A few days later he was enraged to hear that Miller had been text messaging on her cell phone. Based on a message Miller sent a minute before the 911 call reporting the accident, police surmised that she became distracted and crossed the center line.
Crashes blamed on cell phone use and text messaging as well as recent studies outlining the dangers of the practice have helped build interest around the country in restrictions.
As of late 2009, six states - California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Washington - and Washington, D.C., required drivers to use a hands-free device, and 19 states and Washington, D.C., prohibited text messaging behind the wheel.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktar.com ...
Sad. RIP.
This is tragic but I wonder why Vinnie never married Stacey.
Every work day, I drive home past a Verizon “don’t text and drive” billboard and marvel at the fact that they even felt the need to run that campaign.
I have had more incidents where I work in the last two years because of our drivers using a cellphone than the last 14 combined.
And these drivers drive concrete mixers.
We now have a policy that if they are ever caught using a cellphone while driving they will get one warning, just one, second time they are released. Fired, terminated, hit the road Jack, whatever.
Stacey was his fiancee. How long had they been engaged?
The problem is not "importance" of the message per se, but the "immediacy" of the contact. People seem to feel that they have to send a message, or reply to one, RIGHT NOW NO MATTER WHAT.
It's nuts. I've felt the "pull" of the immediacy myself at times -- it's hard to ignore. I quit smoking many years ago, and that was actually easier in some respects.
Seems I’ve done rather well without all this technology.
Personally, I can't understand the attraction of all these devices. For some people a pager/cell phone may be necessary for business purposes. But I think most people go around with these things just to flaunt their “wealth” and to look cool.
Really, what is so important that you have to page or text or call someone from your vehicle while driving? Probably nothing.
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/cellularphonelaws/
and has outlawed the use of handheld wireless telephones while driving as of July 1, 2008.
However, people still routinely ignore these laws. I still see motorists "on the phone" who are texting while holding the phone in their laps, or have the phone on speaker while holding it away from the head like it's a pack of playing cards.
There's also a certain group of motorists--who are also often driving SUVs with tinted windows and no license plates (at least none in the back)--who still talk on the hand-held cell phone quite blithely, with no concern at all.
I fear driving these days. Heck, I even fear being a pedestrian!
PHoenix has outlawed texting also.
It absolutely frosts me every time I see some idiot on their cellphone or blackberry (texting, yes, texting while driving). This happens everyday. I can’t imagine what is so important that they risk injury to themselves (or others whom they obviously don’t give a damn about) that they have to preoccupy themselves with a conversation (most I assume are frivolous) or message. My auto was rear ended by a 22 year old kid while I was waiting for a train to pass. As soon as I heard the screech of his tires as he attempted to stop I saw in my rear view mirror he was on his cell phone (5:30 am in the morning, who the he$$ was he talking to at 5:30 in the morning?). As I asked for his driver’s license to prepare for the accident report, he produced a ticket given his license was being held as a result of a previous offense. Guess what it was...driving while using his cell phone. If I could have ringed his neck right there, I would have. The technology is wonderful, but there is a right time and place for it, and driving two tons of steel and being preoccupied by it isn’t it.
Just recently drove with my friend from new orleans to baton rouge, about an hour drive. I was the passenger, so I was gazing out the window a bit. For about a 20-30 mile stretch, every single female that we passed was either texting or on the cell phone. I did not see a male doing the same during this period.
It’s time for women to get their heads out of their electronic pacifiers and stop being menaces to other people on the road. Get control of your ADD and your endless need to socialize and pay attention to the road.
Well, my cell phone is how my children get in touch with me when I go somewhere or how I keep in touch with my husband when he’s at work.
Nationwide ban on texting while driving.
Well here is something even more frightening, try riding a motorcycle and having the circumstance of another drivers attention being focused on something else other than seeing you.
Happens to me, now I was aginst loud pipes and headlight modulators but this is my very survival, so I have drilled my pipe out and am installing some high tech turn signals that have a multi strobe flash.
That’s fine; just don’t use it while driving.
Lawsuit against the cellular provider incoming in 5... 4... 3...
Being caught text messaging and driving should result in forfeiture of your car and 10 year prison term mandatory. Enforce it and it will stop.
no thanks, we have enough nanny state laws. I’ll be a little more vigilant and watch out for the idiots out there myself. It’s part of the price of freedom and I’m prepared to pay it.
My fellow Americans: Please pick your spouses carefully. Wives: Please stay 1/2 way attractive to your husbands and not grow an @$$ half the size of a couch. Men: Please love your wife as Christ loves the church and not $cr3w the secretary, even if your wife blew up to 1/2 the size of your couch; hurt feelings by a Jenny Craig subscription is much better than injured children via divorce. Most of America's ills today result in the break up of families. This has become crazy in America!
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