Texting and Walking

When people hear ridiculous or seemingly crazy things, they tend to criticize without thinking about the motivation behind it.

This is most easily seen by silly laws in certain cities/states.  For example, there is a law in some town that bans riding a bike in swimming pools.  This is hilarious, as you cannot ride a bike in a swimming pool because you would sink!  What a ridiculous law!  But wait, if you were to think about it, you may realize that just because it’s a swimming pool doesn’t mean it has water in it.  If you’ve ever seen professional trick or stunt bikers, they do they’re runs in skateboard parks that very closely resemble empty swimming pools.  This law doesn’t seem so ridiculous anymore, now does it?

Another more recent and probably more difficult law to understand is the one in some state that banned texting while walking.  That is so silly!  How could they make it illegal to text and walk at the same time?  Well, to figure this one out, try to consider the dangers of texting while walking – you could bump into someone else or maybe a pole.  This seems harmless enough.  What’s the big deal?  Or you might walk into traffic unaware.  The purpose of the law is not to restrain people from texting and walking, but rather to place some fault on the pedestrian if they are involved in an accident while distracted by their cell phone.

Most things are not accidents or coincidences, although they may seem that way.  Please stop and try to think about the motivations behind something seemingly ridiculous before criticizing it.