Driver dies while chatting on phone and driving

[MOTOhooligan]

This is from The Cellular News and I feel really guilty because I chuckled a little bit when I first read it. It's more ironic than it is humorous...


An Abington, Massachusetts woman has died after crashing her car while driving and using a cell phone at the same time. In potentially the greatest of ironies, she crashed the car after losing control and driving straight into a cell phone retail store, operated by Cingular Wireless.

The young woman was not wearing a seat belt when she crashed into the phone shop and she died at hospital. It took rescuers about 20 minutes to free her from the wreckage of the car, a 1999 Mercury Cougar.

Local Police said Lawton, a Massasoit Community College student studying to be an emergency medical technician, was talking to a friend on her cell phone at the time. Lawton told her friend, "I'm about to get into an accident." The friend told police she heard the crash and then the phone disconnected, police said.

Abington is a small community of 13,000 people some 12 miles south of Boston.

[BSJ723]

Originally posted by: rancidhooligan
Local Police said Lawton, a Massasoit Community College student studying to be an emergency medical technician, was talking to a friend on her cell phone at the time. Lawton told her friend, "I'm about to get into an accident." The friend told police she heard the crash and then the phone disconnected, police said.

She was paying enought attention to be able to tell her friend that she was going to have an accident, but not enough attention to keep the friggin car on the road? What I am getting from this story is that the driver either was planning suicide or she had her priorities while driving way out of whack.

[kranium007]

Originally posted by: BSJ723

She was paying enought attention to be able to tell her friend that she was going to have an accident, but not enough attention to keep the friggin car on the road? What I am getting from this story is that the driver either was planning suicide or she had her priorities while driving way out of whack.

same thoughts here... was she trying to crash? just drop the phone on the floor and steer your vehicle clear of any oncoming cellular stores or other large objects.
like i posted before, my recent accident happened because someone was too cheap to go out and purchase an earpiece to use while driving. now her family is going to be sued by me for over $100,000 for negligence. thats an expensive phone call. (plus the costs of replacing the two vehicles other than her own that she totalled. plus the other person she hit is suing right along with me.) in the end that phone call is going to cost her over 250,000. normally i wouldnt sue someone but people need to learn. driving comes first, talking second. if it had been a "true" accident i wouldnt sue for anything at all, but her negligence really pi$$ed me off.

[MOTOhooligan]

Yes, I agree. I don't think the young woman should have died but talking while driving is very dangerous. If she had time to say, "I'm going to crash," then she had time to steer clear. Maybe it was a suicide attempt that she did not want people to think was a suicide. Without all the particulars I guess we'll never know.

[kranium007]

i just think driving in general needs to be monitored a bit more closely. no one should die in a car.

[1900mhzcdma]

earpieces can be worse. There are laws everywhere against driving with headphones on. If you have one ear that blocks the sound of a horn honking, you can possibly get scratched a little. Speakerphone is the only option. They should just ban doing everything other than driving in the car.

[BSJ723]

Here's something scary that KevinJames posted. Here


Why don't we add TV capabilities to something that is dangerous to use while driving as it is?

[MOTOhooligan]

People (rich people, anyway) are already replacing their air bags with plasma screen TVs in their steering wheels. That's really an intelligent thing to do: remove something designed to save your life and replace it with something that is going to distract you so that you're more likely to crash. Darwin would be proud.

[bobolito]

I didn't know that Cingular had drive-thru locations.

[Critic]

I was just wondering if the woman was a Cingular customer. And if she was, will they add the damages to the store to her final bill?

(And if she's not a customer, is this sort of thing covered under a roaming agreement?)

[Bugwart]

Originally posted by: bobolito I didn't know that Cingular had drive-thru locations.

They do now!!

[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

[MOTOhooligan]

I think it was a trying-to-kill-two-birds-with-one-stone suicide. She had racked up a huge cell phone bill while roaming and the sales rep she bought the phone from worked at that location. Since she was going to kill herself because of the bill she figured she'd take out the Cingular store as well.