{"id":389942,"date":"2010-03-04T15:58:57","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T20:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2011255805_textingwhiledrivingaprimaryoffense.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2010-03-04T15:58:57","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T20:58:57","slug":"texting-while-driving-a-primary-offense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/389942","title":{"rendered":"Texting while driving a primary offense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Teens not the only offenders<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Thank goodness there is a cellphone measure to target people \u2014 mostly teens, of course \u2014 who are talking and texting on the phone while driving [\u201cCellphone measure targets teen drivers,\u201d page one, Mar. 4].<\/p>\n<p>However, here\u2019s what I don\u2019t understand. There have been at least six instances in the last two months where I have watched someone either beside me or behind me weave or come close to hitting me because they were texting. None of them were teenagers.<\/p>\n<p>I am not saying teens don\u2019t text. I work in a high school and it\u2019s almost impossible to stop them. But saying we are all going to be safe now because there is a measure to stop teens from texting in the car is ridiculous \u2014 not to mention that we have just offended a major population of people on the road who know they are not the only ones who text when they drive.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, they are, quite frankly, better at texting than the housewife who ran into my lane head-on before she looked up from her phone and just about had a heart attack. I\u2019m just saying the consequences should be the same for everyone.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 Jeannie Manning, Bothell<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Only way to ensure safety<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If cellphone-using drivers promise to destroy only their own property in accidents and to not injure anyone other than themselves, I would agree with Rep. Dan Roach that his is the \u201clibertarian\u201d freethinking stance. Given the difficulty of arranging this, however, I prefer to have the government meddlers make these dangerous drivers hang up.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014 Sara Lorimer, Shoreline<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Teens not the only offenders Thank goodness there is a cellphone measure to target people \u2014 mostly teens, of course \u2014 who are talking and texting on the phone while driving [\u201cCellphone measure targets teen drivers,\u201d page one, Mar. 4]. However, here\u2019s what I don\u2019t understand. There have been at least six instances in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2861,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-389942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}