Collateral Damage

So Miss Laura Mulkey loses her life to someone texting while driving. Sorry.

It's going to happen more and more, regardless of how much we try to legislate it.

It's going to happen because we have a nation obsessed with cars, and we have a transportation secretary that thinks a two-day summit, followed by six months of review, followed by a report that everyone already knows the results, is going to solve the problem of distracted driving.

It won't. Sorry. Miss Laura is just one of the first of a million Americans that are going to lose their lives to other distracted drivers over the next two decades. Go ahead, pass a law mandating that we not drive with a cellularized telephone in our hands and we're going to do it anyway. Two hundred million of us drive 52 miles per hour down 25 limited residential streets...you're going to tell me that now, tomorrow, some new federal law banning texting while driving is really going to stop them? Please. It won't. The only way to stop it is to change American culture, to change their relationships with their public realms, their roadways. And we are not in any position to change our culture of feckless speed and wanton negligence towards others.

Deaths are expected. Laura's death was expected. She deserved it because this is the natural consequence of a culture of ignorance towards others and a culture of more, of now, of today. My death on Franklin Blvd. might be next, and if so, it wouldn't be surprising and would wholly be expected. This is simply the collateral damage of perpetual motoring.