Currently there are about 18 states that have laws making texting while driving illegal –OMG!!!!

I am guilty of reading my Blackberry while driving.  I don’t normally text until I am at a stoplight (or on a long straight stretch of road, of which Montana has plenty).

I’ve never had an accident that was my fault (knock on wood).  Critics will read that last sentence and say Ol’ Jack is running out of luck.

Maybe so.  I am also running out of life too, but I try not to think about it.

All heck must have broken loose when vehicles started coming off the assembly line with AM radios way back when.  

I guess that was before the government started invading our lives.

Then someone invented AM/FM radios.  More buttons and more choices to take your mind off your primary duty, which is driving.

The old eight-track tapes had buttons to rewind or fast forward to your favorite song.  And don’t forget those cassette tapes – they must have caused a stir.  I had a 120 watt power booster with my Pioneer speakers and cassette deck.  The power boosters had a jack for a microphone so we could sing along and hear ourselves over the speakers.  My mind was not on the road, but on the song playing (and the girls in my car).  Cheap Trick –Live at Budokan, sounded great with everyone singing along!

Now we have CD players, hook-ups for iPods, DVD players, satellite radios, etc., in vehicles.

How about the lady in my Garmin?  She annoys me and takes my mind off driving when I miss a turn.

I don’t remember if there were concerns or not about CB radios, but they took our concentration off the road when someone would say, “Breaker, breaker, let’s jump over to channel 1-8, good buddy.”  So there you were switching to channel 1-8 as you motored down the highway at 75 MPH dodging Smokey.

I won’t even get into EWD (Eating While Driving), or someone may try to ban drive-through fast food places.  If you know me, that would not be a good thing.

Seriously though, what I would really like to see is our elected officials concentrate more on getting drunk drivers off the road.  Let’s not worry too much about texting just yet.  Read a newspaper or watch TV very often and you’ll see that some folks are getting caught for the third, fourth, or more times for drunk driving.  It’s ridiculous that they are even allowed to roam freely in society, but they do.

The State of Montana has aired some great public service commercials about the dangers of drinking and driving.  Montana Department of Transportation Director Jim Lynch does a great job in these commercials.  They make you think, which is good, but I don’t know if they are significantly lowering the number of drunk drivers on our roadways.

We should make a deal:  Lower the number of people driving drunk in the United States by 95% by making the penalties so freaking severe for the second and subsequent violations that you cannot afford to spend that much money and time in jail.  Then you can go after those pesky people who text while driving.  OK?