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Piece Description
Cell phones are now causing more automobile accidents than cats beneath brake pedals and dogs who jump into the driver's lap to bark at passing cars.





James Reiss
Posted on March 14, 2008 at 06:43 AM | Permalink
Review of Cell Phones and Automobile Accidents
One of three drivers in southwest Ohio may be seen tooling along with a cell phone pressed to an ear. Maybe there are states in which mobile phone usage while driving is illegal, but the Buckeye State is not one of them. Neither, apparently, is the state of Maine.
Robert Skoglund is an old salt as pissed off by drivers using cell phones as I. His thick Pine Tree State accent is so wonderfully exotic, sort of like Click and Clack to the max, that the listener tends to take Skoglund's words with, well, a grain of salt. When he begins by mentioning he's received a "hoax e-mail that said that a cell phone could touch off an explosion if it were to ring while you were gassing up your car," the listener might laugh out loud. Actually, I wonder whether there may be a mini-powder keg of truth in that e-mail.
At any rate, Skoglund's angry monologue against mobile phones (and, I'm guessing, Bluetooth devices) in cars is particularly disturbing because its tone, its "ringtone," if you will, appears to be curmudgeonly good-humored. Skoglund wonders how many accidents have been caused by drivers using cell phones. There should be a study, even a blue-ribbon commission, that issues a white paper on cell phone statistics.
For now Skoglund's accent is a hoot. Both the sound and the sense of this interstitial are well worth hearing -- and licensing.