Productivity

Evidently, time was a wastin'

The woman in the Lexus SUV behind me kept looking down at something while we were on the one ramp this morning. It was rush hour, so the ramp was metered. We'd sit, roll forward a car or truck length, sit, roll forward, wash, rinse, repeat. And when I'd stop, I'd glance in my rear-view mirror. The woman behind me was dividing her time between watching where she was going, and whatever it was she was fiddling with - texting, reading e-mail, whatever. If she'd only looked down when stopped, it would have been better, but she'd let her car roll up behind mine, while her attention was seemingly fixed on her lap.

I know that I seemed obsessive about it, but I'd once been stopped been stopped at a red light, and the person behind me had better things to do than keep his mind on what he was doing, he'd rolled into me, putting a football-sized dent in the back of my car, and consigning me to several weeks of being folded into Origami by a sadistic chiropractor. So I was very attentive to her. But no so much that I didn't realize the irony that on the radio, at that same time, was this story: Government Eyes Crackdown On Texting And Driving.

I understand bans on Texting and Driving are becoming more popular, but I don't think that it's really the way to go. Mainly because I don't think that it really hits the target. Think of the last time you heard or read someone saying that the time you spend in a car, going from one place to another, as "wasted," "unproductive" or an "under-utilized resource to be reclaimed" - even when YOU'RE the one doing the driving? Not that long ago, was it? Why do we deride time used watching where we're going on the the road as misspent? The woman behind me was clearly of the opinion that whatever it was she was doing was too important to wait. So, she divided her time and attention between driving, and the other activity - much to my consternation. (By the way, she didn't wind up rear-ending me.) But she was doing something that garners a lot of respect in today's world - "multitasking." She was doing something "constructive" in time that we currently have little respect for.

In an earlier story on Texting and Driving (which I commented on at NPRs site), one David Strayer, a psychologist at the University of Utah, is quoted as saying: "When it becomes stigmatized and you have the legislation and education and science all together as a package, you'll change people's behavior. And until you have that package in place, you're not going to see systematic changes in driver behavior." This is helpful, but it might miss the greater point. To make the roads safer, perhaps we should stigmatize the entire idea that time devoted to nothing other than controlling a moving motor vehicle is somehow wasted - a "gap" in which other, more important things can be done.

I know that I'll spend less time looking in my rear-view mirror.