As guest editor at LAist a few years back, I wrote that drinking and driving don’t mix — so obviously, the driving had to go. Now, Wired columnist Clive Thompson writes that texting and driving don’t mix — so obviously, the driving has to go!

Texting while driving is, in essence, a wake-up call to America. It illustrates our real, and bigger, predicament: The country is currently better suited to cars than to communication. This is completely bonkers.

Clive’s public transit-friendly column’s especially fitting right now, since the decline in driving that began a couple years ago seems to have ended. At the time, states across the country are banning texting while driving — a practice that increases your risk of collision up to 23 times, as Clive points out.

Clive’s unconvinced, however, that these laws will actually deter drivers from texting — which is why he says “we need to work urgently on making driving less necessary in the first place”:

There are other benefits to making the streets safe for texters: Dramatically increasing public transit would also decrease our carbon footprint, improve local economies, and curtail drunk driving. (Plus, we’d waste less time in spiritually draining bumper-to-bumper traffic.)

Think texting’s a total waste of time and drain on productivity? Keep in mind that on some public transit systems — like my local-ish Foothill Transit bus line Silver Streak — people have free wifi. Those buses and trains let green commuters pull out their good old fashioned laptops and get some real work done, in bigger than 140-character chunks.

Don’t text and drive! Tweet me from the bus or train instead –

Top photo by Café du Monde; bottom photo by Siel

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