Every 90 minutes!!

[jchnhtfd]

Cell phones certainly are among the worst distractions (driving whatever -- trains or SUVs!) since a lot of your attention is on the phone conversation. Simply put: if you're driving a car or checking a move or throwing a switch, do that and nothing else. Seems to me, though, that with regard to driving cars (and GP), cell phones are getting way too much play as distractions, since the emphasis is taking attention away from all the other idiot things drivers do to distract themselves in traffic. Take the burger -- so long as the burger doesn't slide out of the bun, it's not so bad? But what happens when it does? Where do you look? Right... at your lap and the mess you made. In spite of the fact that the stoplight ahead turned red. And so on...

What was it someone said on another thread? Common sense? And Pay Attention to what you're doing? Neither one seems to be that common... oh well...

[CShaveRR]

QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard
Talking on the phone and switching cars doesn't mix either.

Amen to that. I will call my wife on occasion from work, but only when I'm between trains (in the assignment sense, not the physical sense!), or when a move is going on that doesn't directly involve me. I occasionally get calls while I'm engaged in classifying cars, and my wife has the annoying habit of calling at the moment I'm trying to juggle four or more heavy loads at a time...I often wind up losing one. She hears about that, one way or another.[:(!]. However, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to say to a company officer, "Would you like us to stop humping so we can continue this discussion?" Works nearly every time! [;)]

[edblysard]

Actually, Tree
Cellphones cause a problem out here on the railroad too!
I work in a switching yard, and had a helper off the extra board one day.
Sent him to get a cut of cars out of the receiving yard.
When he came shoving around into the yard, he was standing on the end of a tank car, in the middle of the crossover platform, with his back to the direction of movement, talking to his girlfriend on his cellphone.
He had no real idea where he was, or where he and the train were headed.
I stopped the movement, and told him either lose the phone for the rest of the shift, or go home.
I have a cellphone, and it stays in the car while I am at work.
My wife is a grown up, if she needs milk, or bread from the store, she has a perfectly good Durango and the check book, we dont live that far from a store, she dosnt need to call me and ask me to pick it up on the way home.
If an emergency happens at home, she can call the tower and get me.
Dont need it in the yard, dont want the distraction.
This stuff can bite real quick if you dont pay 100% attention to it.
Talking on the phone and switching cars dosnt mix either.
Stay Frosty,
Ed

[tree68]

Almost got run over in the French Quarter by (this is starting to sound like bashing) a woman in a sports car - on a cell phone. People say that talking on a cell phone is no worse than, say, eating a Big Mac, but it really is. When you eat, your concentration stays in the car (even if not fully on driving). When you talk on the phone, your concentration is on the other end of the line. I'm a volunteer fire officer, and I've run into times where I was talking on the fire radio and discovered myself in a situation I might not have had to deal with if I hadn't been.

But this is a railroad forum. Off the soapbox.

[Mookie]

Willy - had a lady lose her life about a week ago - small car ran red light and was hit broadside by SUV! Other driver was woman, also. The small car stopped at the red light, just like a stop sign and then proceeded into the intersection. Bet there was a cell phone or two in use there. So now many people are suffering - cars and alcohol don't mix and cars and cell phones don't either.

Mookie

[Willy2]

QUOTE: Originally posted by ironhorseman

Let's run the numbers on that:

There are sixteen 90-minute segments in a 24 hour period.
So, 16 times a day.
That's 112 times a week.
480 times a month (30 days)
5,840 times a year (5, 856 times in a leap year)
58, 432 times in a decade.

And that's just automobile incidents.


I believe I saw somewhere on the Operation Lifesaver site (www.oli.org) that deaths avarage 900 a year? That's 6.49% of the automobile incidents per year. That comes to about 2.5 deaths per day.

5,840 times a year is terrible! When will people learn to not be talking on cell phones while driving and not to race trains. It is just plain nonsense! 900 deaths a year is terrible too.

[ironhorseman]

Let's run the numbers on that:

There are sixteen 90-minute segments in a 24 hour period.
So, 16 times a day.
That's 112 times a week.
480 times a month (30 days)
5,840 times a year (5, 856 times in a leap year)
58, 432 times in a decade.

And that's just automobile incidents.

I believe I saw somewhere on the Operation Lifesaver site (www.oli.org) that deaths avarage 900 a year? That's 6.49% of the automobile incidents per year. That comes to about 2.5 deaths per day.

[Anonymous]

Just goes to show there is no shortage of possible Darwin Award winners.

http://www.darwinawards.com/

Since we talk about these awards so much I thought I would include a link. If you have never been to the site then enjoy it.

[Anonymous]

I saw an interesting show on the History Channels "Modern Marvels" last night about hazardous materials transport. In addition to a nice clip showing how rail tank cars are manufactured, they mentioned that every 90 minutes in this country, a car or truck runs into a train. Pretty amazing!