Where Is This Going?

Bloomberg Press just published an article claiming "Americans Are Prioritizing Phone Payments Over Car Loans." The article says, “As cars grow relatively less important, borrowers struggling to pay back their loans on time are increasingly prioritizing payments on the latest iPhone instead of making sure they hold on to their pickup or coupe.”

“So what?” You might say . . . and rightfully so.

The reason Bloomberg was interested in this phenomenon is investments. In particular, good old derivatives. Remember them? Those unsecured, gambling vehicles that were used to bankrupt the entire world economy in 2007? Yeah, that’s the way we’re going to look at the future of motorcycling, cars, and cell phones. “The shift is increasing the attractiveness of bonds generated from mobile-phone loans, a small but growing portion of the asset-backed securities market. While just $7.7 billion of bonds backed by phone purchases have been issued since 2016 -- and all by Verizon Communications Inc. -- the number may increase over coming years.”

So, not only are Americans more interested in staring at their tiny screens, tapping away with their thumbs at the speed of mentally deficient secretaries, and double-checking their “likes” while walking into traffic without a clue or a care in the world. And they are walking because their car has been repossessed and they probably didn’t even notice.

If that’s the direction we’re going, you damn well better get whatever you can get out of your vintage bikes while you can. In another generation, you’ll be selling those wheels for scrap metal prices.

Explain, Again?

I suppose this could be considered "socialist," "anti-corporate," or "anti-business," and I'm good with being labeled all of that. What I do not understand is with overwhelming evidence demonstrating that cell phones and transportation do not mix, why are cell phone providers not required to disable their toys when operated from a moving vehicle? Cell phone drivers are no more competent than drunks and should be regulated as such (drunks, I mean).

The Cell Phone Rule

All Rights Reserved © 2012 Thomas W. Day

New road trip rule: Never travel with anyone who carries a multi-function touchscreen phones.

Case One: For a decade or two my brother, Larry, and I have talked about taking a motorcycle trip together. Larry suffers from the classic Kansas "I don't care, what do you want to do?" indecision syndrome and the trip has been on-again, off-again for at least three years; as has been his motorcycle ownership decision. Our 2007-2010 trips were cancelled due to family disasters. In 2011, after a summer of missed schedules and minor miscues we began to "organize" a trip around Lake Superior in July. 

Organize is a misused word when it comes to the two of us; or just me. When I bought my WR250X, I told Larry about my plan to circle Lake Superior this summer and he asked if he could go along on my V-Strom. So, instead of prepping one bike for a trip I laid out the riding and camping gear and did the work and paid the tab for tires, chain and sprockets, and general maintenance for two motorcycles and two riders. I gave him a range of departure dates and waited to hear something for a month. I tried for the 1st week in July, no answer. I could feel the trip slipping away. I tried, again, for the 3rd week. Still quiet. I picked a day and got ready for the trip, solo. Four days before my planned departure day, Larry says it's a go. I had a motorcycle class the weekend before we would leave, so I crammed finishing up the V-Strom chores into 2 days. Larry arrived on Saturday night. We did a brief ERC to refresh his skills on Monday. We were on the road Tuesday at 6AM.

After a good start, we stopped for breakfast and the cell phone routine begins. He checked his text messages and sent a few. Then, he called his girlfriend and that's how we spent breakfast. So it went for each meal and every night's stop for a few days. We quit before dusk every day and he was on the phone until 2AM the first night. I didn't ask about his 2nd night, but I knew it went past midnight. The third day out, he was tired, slow to get moving, took long disorganized and unannounced stops, and finally got lost on the only highway going our direction. I backtracked 50 miles, looking in all the ditches, and couldn't find him. Cell phones are useless in Ontario, outside of two cities, so both of our phones were a waste of radio waves for 150 miles.

About 7PM, three hours after he disappeared, Larry called my wife and they talked about where he was, where I was, and where we could meet. What I got out of that was that he was alive and still in Canada. My wife isn't good with message translation. Luckily, Larry and I tripped over each other in Thunder Bay and got back on the path again.

Case Two: I took a couple of short road trips with a friend a few years ago. He's a proud man who believes he is in charge of all of his habits. But every time his iPhone phone rang he had to stop whatever he was doing and answer the damn thing. If we were riding, he'd pull over, take off his gear, and yak on the phone for a few minutes. All while I was stuck waiting for the phone jones to subside so we could get back on the road. The best I've seen him do is to stop to look at his phone and decide the caller wasn't as important as the task at hand and put the call off for an hour or two. He deludes himself into thinking that is a major improvement. It pains me to see a man enslaved to a crappy piece of technology and the expectations of everyone who knows his phone number.

The last couple of times my friend wanted to go somewhere, I suggested we take my car because we might be able to get there and back in my lifetime by cage. I figured if he just talked on the phone all the way to and from our destination while I drove we could save some time and hassle. Since I'd rather walk than travel by cage when the weather is even half-decent, we quit travelling together during riding season.

As I get older and grumpier, I'm generating lists of "never do that again" items. I've always hated telephones, but cell phones and the constant connection addiction took that to a new level. After the incident with my brother, I tossed my cell phone into the street and I haven't decided if I want to replace it. I might give my residual pay-as-you-go minutes to my daughter and be rid of that infernal technology for the rest of my life. Six months later, I haven't been inspired to replace the thing. This could be significant.

Part of what I love about motorcycling is the solitude, the remoteness of being on a one-person vehicle out of touch with work, responsibility, and my usual life. A mobile phone can defeat all of that, if you're not willing to turn the damn thing off. It appears to me that the fancier the phone, but more addicting the thing becomes. Once you can do more than have an unpleasant conversation on your phone, I suspect smartphoners begin to think the phone is actually more entertaining than the places and people nearby. If I'm who you're with and where we are is some place that took some effort to get to, I admit to being insulted by that slight.

The telephone is one of my least favorite modern "conveniences." I have a simple pay-as-you-go cell phone, but it's only turned on when I want to call someone. I rarely want to fool with my phone. In fact, in 2011 I bought 500 annual minutes and carried over 400 into 2012. The clanging, squawking, beeping, or tinny musical reproduction announcing a telephone call is a rude interruption to the flow of the moment. I'm a huge fan of the "no news is good news" philosophy and I can't remember the last time a telephone call brought good news. Phones are like spoiled children, shrieking "Look at me! Now!" I can decide when to receive and respond to snail mail or email. A telephone call is insistent that I respond when someone else decides to interrupt my day. Carrying a portable telephone is like spending a day with an enemy, nothing good will come from it. If you add more distracting functions to the telephone, I will only dislike it more. There is nothing "smart" that ever comes from a telephone.

So, I'm adding smartphone owning motorcyclists to my list of things to avoid; along with motorcycles previously owned by kids, Falstaff-ian motorcycles and bikers, going into debt for toys, being guilted into taking a trip with someone I don't know well, budget motorcycle riding gear,  vintage motorcycles, scooters, and all motorcycles with "personality," distracted cagers, riding cold or dehydrated, marketing people, panic reactions, and motorcycle hoarders. That list might have missed one or two other irritants I've written about or am about to write about. Call it an unwarranted prejudice, if you like. However, since I would just as soon avoid hearing one end of a two-way conversation that is as entertaining as Dick Cheney's sense of humor, I don't have a dog in this fight. It's not a hard problem to solve, either. I'll keep moving while you settle those trivial problems that come to you by cell phone and we'll talk about the trip when we get home.

Smacking Home

On the way to an MSF class Wednesday, I got stuck behind a big-ass clubcab pickup and witnessed the cell phone abusing retard wobbling all over Rice Street until he rear-ended a guy on a cruiser. The cruiser guy didn't get much "protection" from his loud pipes, even though I could hear him two vehicles back, through my helmet, with ear plugs solidly in place. Adding noise to the already unhealthy noise levels of the world is a pretty passive-aggressive tactic and passive-aggression is well known to be ineffective.

The definition of "bimbo." Evidence 

that drivers' licenses are handed out

in Cracker Jack boxes. 

It looked like the cell phone douche was planning to duck out, so I made a show of scribbling his plate number down before I parked to look at the damage. There was a lot of damage, but the biker's injuries looked survivable if disfiguring. His face was pretty messed up. A nurse from a car on the other side of the road was doing first aid and she'd already called 911.

Two of my top five warning signs of 

driving incompetence. A baseball cap

and a cell phone.

Ten minutes, or so, later, a Ramsey County Sheriff's Deputy showed up and started collecting information. That's what I was waiting for. We had a brief conversation during which I called the truck-cell-phoner a liar (He'd claimed not to have a cell phone in the truck.) I offered to testify against him, if the cop searched his truck for the phone (which he found and confiscated). Supposedly, smashing into someone while jabbering on a phone is at least $500 over the usual fine, so that ought to be an expensive phone call.

Easy Fix, Never Happen

All Rights Reserved © 2011 Thomas W. Day

The news report read, "Hennepin County attorneys say that on the morning of Oct. 7, 2010, 20-year-old Amanda Elizabeth Manzanares was driving without insurance and under a restricted instructional permit when she drove her car across the centerline of Excelsior Boulevard in Minnetonka and struck a man riding a motorcycle. The man suffered severe injuries that have, to-date, required $500,000 in surgeries and other medical care. . .

"After retrieving Manzanares' cell phone at the scene, Minnetonka police investigators found a series of text message exchanges and calls on Manzanares' phone that were made and received in the minutes surrounding the collision.

"But, according to court documents, Manzanares denied using her phone at the time of the accident, telling Minnetonka police she had “blacked-out,” was tired, that she hadn't taken prescribed medication and that she was still getting comfortable as a driver."

This is what passes for "news" in modern America. Tainted, slanted "information" intended to inflame the unwashed, illiterate masses without providing any solutions, context, or depth. Back when he was funny, Dennis Miller defined television news as a series of unimportant but bad things we could all be glad didn't happen to us.

Don't get me wrong, Manzanares ought to prosecuted for nearly killing an innocent bystander with her miserable, incompetent (for whatever reason) driving. But by shining a bright light on this pitiful excuse for a human being, the law and the media are doing their damndest to distract the blame from the real criminals in this all-too-common sort of incident; cell phone providers. On one hand, television reminds us at every cop-show opportunity that any cell phone can be tracked if it is on. If it can be tracked, its trajectory and velocity can be determined. If all that is true, any communications attempted while the phone is in motion can be terminated. End of problem.

Driving while yapping on a cell phone use is clearly an example of driving while incapacitated. Every study that has examined the relationship between driving drunk and driving while asking "whut r u doin?" has found that cell phones are linked to driving mental retardation. One study (published in Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society) found in simulated driving conditions that drunks (at least those with a 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level) are better drivers than cell phone yappers. None of the drunks crashed in that study, while three cell phone morons did.

Why it took a study to identify this character of cell phone abuse says more about academia, society, and capitalism than it tells us about the actual problem. Any half-conscious motorcyclist knows that you stay as far from a cell phone user as the road permits. They are erratic, marginally conscious, and as dangerous as gangbangers. I'm no less worried about riding near a cell phone user than I am about trying to get by someone who is tossing out the occasional empty beer can or has an Easy Rider rifle rack loaded with automatic weapons.

If you're brand new to this planet and these United States, you might ask, "Why is this tolerated if the solution is so simple?" The reason, dear alien life-form, is money. The slim splinter that remains of our democracy is dedicated to the idea that the profits of a few override the security, health, safety, and quality of life of the nation and its not-rich citizens. Those trust-funded, grossly overpaid and under-skilled corporate executives who are the only real beneficiaries of the death and destruction their products cause (not the cigarette executives, this time) are more important than the lives of every other person on public roads. Why that argument doesn't hold true for alcohol-pushing corporate executives is a little inconsistent, but I'd bet it's because the cell phone execs are richer.

Of course, my electronic trigger isn't the solution I'd recommend in an ideal world; too passive and forgiving. Personally, I'd rather see cell phone manufacturers forced to install a spring-loaded 4" spike in every cell phone that would be triggered by cell phone use at any velocity exceeding 10mph. At worst, the cell phone user would have some part of his/her anatomy skewered for violating rational cell phone laws. At best, one more idiot would be spiked from the gene pool.

Honestly, I don't expect either idea to take hold in my lifetime or before the next comet blasts an idiot wind across the planet and restarts the evolutionary cycle. The rapid degeneration of our species depends on the right of the dumbest and most corrupt evil spawn's access to every damn toy their idiot heart desires. So, my favorite solution is dead in its tracks. Second, the attention deficit disordered have grown to depend on knowing what their friends and family are doing at this very second and they are perfectly happy to kill anyone in their path to have that knowledge. What's the worst thing that can happen, being prosecuted for "felony texting and driving?" That sounds slightly more serious than unpaid parking tickets.

So, why did they?

Here is an interesting article on an issue that directlyaffects motorcycle safety: Why Did the Feds Bury Data on Cell-Phone Dangers? 3/4 of a year ago, several journalists reported that NHTSA had completed studies that found that "showed that all cell phone use is as hazardous as drinking and driving.” They determined this 6 years ago, but Bush's DOT cronies squashed the study results because their cell phone sponsors didn't want the information to affect sales and phone use. Screw the fact that thousands of lives (as many as 2600 per year since 2003) could have been saved, AT&T's execs needed their million dollar bonuses. It required the death of a 12-year-old boy and the dedication of his father to determine why the government decided to withhold this information and the legislation that the knowledge should have inspired.

As a motorcyclist, I put cell phone use near the top of the driver activites that inspire me to move as far from that vehicle as possible. Personally, I'd like to see a simple system that links a phone's GPS to the activation of the cell phone. If the phone is moving more than 10 mph, a small charge in the phone should ignite blowing the ear off of the phone user. That cosemetic damage could serve as a modern version of the "red 'S.'"