[djmcmath]

Drivers around here are bad with or without cell phones. I needed to cross a complex intersection as a pedestrian today, and realized that it was way more complicated than I had normally allowed. It's a one way street fed by two parking lots, one on either side. Additionally, there's a two-way street feeding into it 50 feet away with no traffic control. People come screaming around the right turn onto the one-way and realize that someone's come out of one of the parking lots without stopping to look if traffic was coming, and they slam on their brakes. Meanwhile, there's interfering traffic coming from the other parking lot, also oblivious of the fact that 3 other sources feed into this one tiny strip of road.

In the minute or so that it took me to get across, I nearly witnessed 3 accidents, one involving a motorcycle who was (as expected) paying a lot of attention to the process and nearly got rear-ended by a minivan for his efforts.


Some thoughts occur to me:
Accidents have no consequences: Cars are disposable, and the insurance company covers everything, even if it's obviously your fault. There were 200 million cars built just like yours, why should you make any effort to preserve this one?
Accidents have no consequences: With airbags, automatic seatbelts, and cars with a lot more momentum and survivability than in years past, odds are excellent that you can be a complete idiot, but will still manage to be capable of reproduction afterwards.

That's all for now, I'm sure more will come to me later.