We learned in driver’s ed class with the teacher who wound up looking like Don Knotts after 30 minutes on the road with us that we have a lot to do when we’re driving. Remember your first time on the road? You were sweating bullets by the time you were done, weren’t you?
There was so much to do, so much to watch for, so many others who might do…God knows what. We’ve probably all had one of those momentary lapses in concentration while driving. Unscrewing the cap on a soda and the little ring down the bottom that’s supposed to separate gets itself out of alignment, or the freedom fries (just thought I’d see if you’re paying attention) are hotter than you expected, the cell phone rings as you’re making a turn. Here in New Hampshire you can actually get a ticket for any of those under the heading of “distracted driving.”
Most of the time there’s no damage, nobody’s hurt. We may feel a little stupid or react in kind to a startled driver who honks and flips us off when we’ve nearly run him off the road but there’s no real harm done.
But how tough can it be to drive a trolley? It’s on tracks so you don’t have to steer, right? There’s no oncoming traffic, no pedestrians to watch for, at least not underground. Yet somehow the operator of an MBTA trolley managed to rear-end another trolley the other day. Somewhere near 50 people were hurt, none seriously.
Okay I’m grateful for that but let tell you something, a broken leg may not be a “serious” injury to you but if it’s MY leg I’m taking that pretty freakin’ seriously. Oh yeah, I know that’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things but if I’m going to be in some sort of cast for a while and on crutches for a few weeks and maybe I’m going to be able to forecast the weather by my leg for the rest of my life I take that seriously. From my point of view, the closer the proximity to me the more serious the injury.
But back to the point. Really, how tough can it be to drive a trolley? They’ve even got traffic lights down there so you know when to slow down and when to stop before you rear end the train of cars in front of you. How can you screw that up?
Technology has come up with the answer! Texting.
Yup, we’ve got a job that’s pretty easy here, although it carries a fair amount of responsibility with it, so what do we do? We act irresponsibly. We add the challenge of trying to type while operating a trolley in the dark. Oh sure we can all say the trolley operator is stuck on stupid for texting on the job but is he really that different from the rest of us?
We live in an age when multi-tasking is expected of almost everyone nearly the whole time we’re at work. We multi-task when we’re driving, why shouldn’t the T operator expect to be able to successfully multi-task while driving a trolley, underground (talk about limited access highways), on a track. Of course he thought he could do it.
Just like you thought you could handle that hot cup of Starbucks and converse on a cell phone, while you negotiated rush-hour traffic on Route 128 (it will never be I-95 to me) on the way to work.
And what, exactly, are we accomplishing by all this multi-tasking?
The trolley driver was sending a text-message to his girl friend. How much do you want to bet that conversation could have been delayed for a millennium or two without doing any harm to the human race? How many conversations that you’ve had while driving began with the phrase, “what’s going on?”, because neither you or the person on the other end of the phone had anything to say. You’re just talking because you can.
The “Sunday Globe Magazine” a few weeks ago had an interview with novelist Anne LeClair about her practice of having two silent days a month. Years ago Larry Hagman revealed he had a silent day a month, or once a week or some other such nonsense. Turns out that they wind up developing other ways of communicating on those days because sometimes you really do have to talk to other people. Sometimes there really is something to say.
But most of the time there isn’t anything or certainly not anything that can’t wait. So here’s my suggestion and you can credit me as a self-help guru when you pass it along to others. Ready? Shut the Hell up! Stop talking.
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