Don't set yourself up to commit vehicle homicide: hang up and drive

Please stop making or answering phone calls while driving. Hands free or not.

It puts you and everyone else on the roads with you at as much risk as if you were driving impaired by alcohol.

There is ZERO evidence that hands-free telephone use while driving is any safer than holding the cell phone.  Every single study, going back to the 90s has shown that the distraction caused by hands free phone calling is every bit as pervasive as using a regular cell phone while driving.

The hazard is not what you're doing with your hands, 

it's what you're doing with your attention.

If you are a driver who talks on the phone while driving (rather than a passenger), please watch this video, and ask yourself what call you make that is worth killing someone to make.

http://youtu.be/_BqFkRwdFZ0

Although this powerful documentary is about people who kill while texting, 

THERE IS VERY LITTLE DIFFERENCE IN THE DEGREE OF IMPAIRMENT BETWEEN A DISTRACTED DRIVER DISTRACTED BY A PHONE CALL AND BY TEXTING.

That's not just me, that's what the data show.

I know there are fifty or five hundred people ready to tell me "what about adjusting the radio?" Or "what about people who eat while driving" etc. etc. and all I can say is that it is a FATAL mistake to not understand the difference in how humans actually behave in interactions with others (conversations or text exchanges) and how humans behave with inanimate things. 

Please do not endanger the rest of us and set yourself up to be commit vehicular homicide.

If you are driving, please do not converse with people not in the same car with you by any means.  Period.  Your loved ones, and other peoples' loved ones will thank you.

Six goals for making Salem, Oregon a much better place -

Interesting goals list -- the first five are outstanding ... 

No. 6 hits an important issue, but invites trouble as proposed, and could be greatly improved
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Six goals for making Salem, Oregon a much better place - HinesSight
http://hinessight.blogs.com/hinessight/2015/02/six-goals-for-making-salem-oregon-a-much-better-place.html

I would revise 6 to read "Discourage Unused and Underused Space by Charging Owners for Degrading The City" -- instead of putting the city even more into the "subsidy for business" business, we let the market figure out what's best, by forcing building owners to pay a rising fee monthly for each month after a minimum (3?) that a developed lot or storefront within the downtown core remains vacant or underused. 

The money would go into funds for downtown projects, so it would benefit the downtown businesses indirectly, and help ameliorate the burden they bear because other building owners let their properties be idle so long, exerting a drag on all downtown businesses.

In this way, instead of promoting graft and city government cronyism, we get a uniform, transparent policy that will strongly incent landlords to find and keep suitable tenants downtown, or sell to someone who will use the space themselves or wants to be a better landlord at rents the market is willing to pay. 

Right now, we're suffering from landlords who aren't paying high enough carrying charges on their buildings, so they're fine with no rent coming in too long. Rather than raise taxes generally, we should simply penalize the landlords who impose costs on downtown with their refusals to bring the rents down enough to get a tenant into the space.

"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."