{"id":23311,"date":"2017-07-24T00:34:18","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T00:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=23311"},"modified":"2017-07-24T00:34:18","modified_gmt":"2017-07-24T00:34:18","slug":"hoping-that-texting-ban-produces-tangible-result","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=23311","title":{"rendered":"Hoping that texting ban produces tangible result"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/th.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-18510\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/th-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>My wife has many innate talents. One of them is her ability to detect someone who is <em>texting<\/em> while driving a motor vehicle.<\/p>\n<p>Tooling along the northern edge of Des Moines, Iowa, she spotted a car in front of us; she was quite certain the driver wasn&#8217;t paying sufficient attention to the task of driving a motor vehicle. The driver was erratic; the car was weaving back and forth in the lane. Then the driver moved to the exit lane and sure enough, as we passed, we noticed a young woman looking at her <em>texting<\/em> device while hurtling along at about 60 mph.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to scream!<\/p>\n<p>My wife then wondered about those electronic signs that the Texas Department of Transportation posts along our state&#8217;s highways that give us a running total of the traffic deaths during the calendar year. &#8220;I wonder if the state could put the number of fatalities caused by texting while driving,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know the answer to that. Then I mentioned that the state does keep some sort of record on the cause of traffic fatalities.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, yes. The Texas Legislature this year finally approved a bill that bans texting while driving throughout the state. It&#8217;s now against state law to operate device while driving a motor vehicle. I thank Gov. Greg Abbott for signing the bill into law.<\/p>\n<p>My hope now is that the new law, which takes effect in September, will have a tangible impact on the number of traffic deaths caused by that idiotic behavior, that the ban over time will reduce that number dramatically.<\/p>\n<p>As for the moron we witnessed along the Des Moines freeway, I will say a prayer that she doesn&#8217;t hurt someone else &#8212; or herself &#8212; while acting so damn stupidly.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My wife has many innate talents. One of them is her ability to detect someone who is texting while driving a motor vehicle. Tooling along the northern edge of Des Moines, Iowa, she spotted a car in front of us; she was quite certain the driver wasn&#8217;t paying sufficient attention to the task of driving &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=23311\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Hoping that texting ban produces tangible result<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,18],"tags":[2006,4653,4741],"class_list":["post-23311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","category-state-news","tag-greg-abbott","tag-texas-legislature","tag-texting-while-driving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23311"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23313,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23311\/revisions\/23313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}