GorillaOffTopic, Everything But Gorilla Trades

Okay, so now that we have heard all of the warnings about the dangers of  talking on your cell while driving, people seem to have finally gotten the message (no pun intended) not to mention, many states have passed new laws banning people from using phones while driving. Well that’s just fantastic (the Gorilla always hates it when people aren’t driving properly because they too busy talking on their phones). But now that we’ve got a handle on that situation, of course, we have another concern to think about; texting.  The American College of Emergency Physicians warns that there may be serious dangers involved in texting while walking, driving, or doing just about anything at the same time your fingers are punching those keys at a thousand miles per minute. One student talks about how she often stumbles while texting and walking because she isn’t paying attention or looking at the ground where she is walking. Another woman admits that she fell off of a curb and twisted her ankle while fingering away at her blackberry. “It was a nice wake-up call for me to be a lot more careful in the future, because I clearly wasn’t paying attention and I should have,” she says.  But the physician’s warnings come at a time when ER doctors are seeing a rise in serious accidents involving people texting and doing other things simultaneously such as walking, biking, roller-blading, and yes, driving. One ER doctor in Texas, Dr. Angela Gardner, even said she recently saw a man who was injured while texting and riding on a segway. Ouch! She says that when questioned about their injuries, people usually lie or make excuses about how they were injured. She usually ends up getting the real story from snickering ambulance drivers and crew.  “People don’t want to admit they were doing something so silly,” Gardner said.  

In a country where 363 billion text messages were sent last year, according to CTIA, a wireless association, this is a big concern. There have also been hundreds of deaths due to texting and driving, and while that may not seem like much, those are only the proven documented cases and authorities say that number will most likely to increase in the next few years due to the popularity of text messaging. The Gorilla’s advice? People can always wait. Remember the days when there were no cell phones? It never killed anyone to have to wait back then, now did it?