Good to talk??

Being a pedestrian in America is no fun. You get the big Humvee drivers who seem to delight in either splashing you, or growling their engines at you impatiently as you cross the road (I am often tempted to stop and THEN see what they do). Then you get the idiots who speed up as you cross the road, the ones that almost take you out because they're too busy running a red light....and then there are the mobile phone uses (I REFUSE to call them cell phones). Now, as i understood it, the law says that it is not illegal to use a mobile when driving, but it is ill advised to do so (I may be wrong here - please correct me. It is, after all, some time since i did the test). I wholeheartedly wish that it becomes illegal (if it isn't) as these drivers are a serious danger on the road here. On an average morning walk to work (all of 5-10 minutes), i see about 80% of the drivers on the phone.

Now, you could argue that with using automatics, there is no need for the driver to keep that extra hand free to change gear and so, what's the danger? Well, the fact that most of them are not wholly focusing on the road in hand for one (Over here, without the gearstick distraction, it only goes to show that you CAN'T do both adequately). Thus, i have been almost hit by people when crossing the road (at crosswalks mind you), when they have been turning into a junction, when parking, when coming out of a car park, even when they've been trundling along at a few MPH - precisely because they have been on the phone. In the last case, thedriver almost seemed to think that her speed was so low that it wouldn't matter if she hit anyone - as she was VERY late to brake. And who, exactly, are these people on the phone to that is SOOOOOO urgent? If it's that bad, they should pull over for the call, if it's not, they should wait and call them back. Either that or they should get hands free - at least that way they can still get their gossip WITHOUT hitting any tall Englishmen in their paths.