The REAL problem with drivers who talk on their phones

My youngest daughter was always a social kid, so when she grew up, she of course adopted all the social media.

She Facebooks, she texts, so that even though she’s out of the house and married, it’s almost like she never left.
But her favorite social media is the phone. The bluetooth is always in her ear.

At least once a week I’ll get a call that begins, “Hello D-A-D, traffic is horrible.” Which is her way of saying that we are about to have a conversation which could, very well, last 45 minutes.

Actually, it’s not so much a conversation as a type of personal news radio, including commentary and traffic updates about drivers who won’t let her merge because they’re applying mascara and balancing McMuffins on the steering column. The word “jerk” comes up a lot.

I wondered about twenty minutes into our most recent conversation – how many other drivers are doing the exact same thing: complaining to their dads about their commutes.

Which is when I realized, they are all talking to the wrong people. Drivers in traffic jams need to be talking to each other!

Not that I don’t like hearing my daughter fantasize about what she’d say to the jerk who won’t let her in, but she needs to be saying this to the actual jerk.

We can do this. Everyone has a smart phone. There could be an app to detect nearby drivers with phones, so that you could call them with a merge request – “Hi, I’m a little late and I’m a really nice person, I need to get off at the next exit, could you let me in this once?”

Much better than simply complaining, and so much more civilized than just gunning it and cutting the guy off.

You might even make a friend. Or at least not get a baseball bat through your windshield.