I seldom drive around town so most of my road time is on the highway. That being said, there is only one road I have been on in my entire life that I would ever ever EVER utilize a cellular telephone on. That is because you can see everything for 150 miles away and the amount of cars in that picture is a busy day.

Since I am almost 3,000 miles away from there I never use the cell phone while driving. People who use cell phones on the road should be sent to a labor camp. It aggravates me to no end when one of my in-laws decides she has to drive and I am in the car. I have almost crapped my pants on several occasions with her driving. To wit, she was driving along a highway in the right lane and proceeded to accelerate in order to box out another vehicle attempting to enter from an on-ramp at a reasonable speed. Why? Because she didn't want a car ahead of her. The fact that there were TWO empty lanes to the left of us and it was a completely open road on a clear day meant nothing. Oh, and she is often on her cell phone calling people. I would not let any children I am responsible for ride in the car of people like that.

Back in the 90s my dad was rear ended at a stop light on a highway by some jackass of a woman who was too busy gabbing to think about applying her brakes. His back still acts up to this day and her insurance never covered everything. Of course, he was the nice guy and went along with her request to the court to have her tickets reduced because Allah forbid some stupid dumbass who thinks its okay to drive around in a 5 ton weapon of mass destruction while talking on a cell phone needs her insurance to go up. I would have gone to court and not only asked the judge to give her the maximum penalty but signed complaints for reckless driving. But I'm not as nice as him.

Because I currently have the floor, here are other things that I believe should result in your car being (at a minimum) cubed:
-Parking in a fire zone (this used to tick me off to no end as an EMT, and now that I live in the 'hood you will have people who leave their car in the fire zone not just to let bloated 400lb Aunt LaVerne off close to the electronic carts but who actually leave their cars in the fire zone while they go inside the store for like 2 hours).
-Parking in a handicapped zone
-Parking in the last handicapped zone with a stolen permit and then loudly joking with passerby about how great your spot is while elderly gentleman with disabled vet stickers parks further back in the lot*
-Passing stopped cars on the right or utilizing the sidewalk to enable blasting through a red light at 90 miles an hour
-Driving on the wrong side of the road in a no passing zone on a busy street because there is a backup in traffic
-Walking out into traffic or walking down the middle of a busy street bouncing a basketball, riding a skateboard, or otherwise being an idiot when you are old enough to know better.

*Enhanced Penalty Offense. I'm willing to consider an aluminum baseball bat to the kneecaps.

I think that probably the best way to approach cell phone laws is to make it an additional penalty if you do something wrong (i.e. run a red light while talking on a cell phone - ticket amount should be doubled),
but not to be pulling people over just for talking on the cell phone. Then again, I feel the same way about drunk driving laws, so perhaps I'm in the minority.

I can get behind this, I guess. I'd like to see BAC limits pushed to 0.12 or whatever they were when I was a kid where you had to be blitzed to get a DUI, not now where they throw people into a supermax prison for blowing an 0.081 or whatever. However, I think the number of laws the cops should be allowed to pull you over for violating (broken taillight, suspicion of bad equipment, whatever) should be reduced. That way if somebody is driving like an asshole they can still pile the charges on, but no more pulling over some minorities just because "one headlight looks smaller than the other" and then pressuring them into searching the car. And while we're at it, get rid of those stupid MADD roadblocks. I also reserve the right to continue to complain about cell phone drivers and people who park illegally in fire zones.

In other news, I was bored and watching that show "Jail" last night. The cops picked up some drunk chick for public drunkenness/open container and they tried to get her to take a breathalyzer as part of booking (We're not going to use it in court or anything, we just need to know how much you drank! Suuuure). She started going off about how she would want her attorney present and she refused the test. They treated her like she was some kind of Manson Family killer, especially when she refused to give anything other than her name, address, etc and repeatedly invoke her right to remain silent. It was the first time in my life I ever rooted for a belligerently drunk trailer park chick before.