‘Sure glad I wasn’t on Bradley Park Drive Thursday morning’

When I first saw the news on Thursday that Columbus Police had given distracted driving citations to 96 motorists in the Bradley Park area, I was glad.

Maybe you felt that way too.

I was glad because every single day, usually when I’m driving to or from work on Second Avenue, I see several motorists swerving like they’re drunk.

They may be drunk, but they’re also texting. I’ll yell at them. I’ll call them an idiot or worse – they don’t hear me or see me – and I’ll wish that somebody in law enforcement would spot them right then and there and stop them and punish them.

The other day, that’s exactly what happened. More than a dozen officers in North Columbus, some of them posing as a survey crew, caught a bunch of these texting fools and gave them $200 tickets.

And I was glad. Texting and driving is incredibly dangerous, and so many people do it that I worry for myself and my wife and my children and everybody I care about who drives on the streets and highways and interstates around here.

I’m not kidding. It’s a serious, serious problem, and I’m glad those responsible for public safety are doing something about it.

But then, after hearing more about the sting operation, I had another thought: Thank goodness I wasn’t driving on Bradley Park Drive that morning.

Not that I text and drive. I don’t, ever. Well, I sometimes let Siri do my texting for me, but I’ve got my eyes on the road and my hands on the steering wheel.

I also don’t tweet or send emails while driving. Or use my laptop. Or read books or magazines. Or apply makeup.

Or turn around and adjust a child’s car seat.

That’s because I don’t have any children in car seats. A dozen or so years ago, I was driving my old pickup truck while trying to explain something to my then-4-year-old son when I rear-ended a vehicle stalled on the road.

It was also an old pickup truck, driven by a Korean War veteran – we were on Veterans Parkway, ironically enough. No damage was done to vehicles or drivers or passengers, and thank God for that.

So I don’t do most of the things that the motorists did Thursday to get their $200 tickets.

But I do sometimes plug my phone into the charger at red lights. I do sometimes glance at the moving blue dot on my phone when I’m following a map, which wouldn’t have been an issue for me in Columbus.

But I do sometimes tap the screen to select a song. I do sometimes take photos while stopped at a red light on Second Avenue, like the time a long row of ducklings followed their mother across the street.

On Thursday, these things would have earned me a citation for distracted driving.

And I would have been plenty mad. I might have even said something like, “Officer, shouldn’t you be going after real criminals?”

You know, like the people who are texting.

But for now I’m mostly glad. Sure, some of the motorists charged on Thursday may have legitimate complaints and will and should challenge the tickets in court.

I also think running a sting operation against distracted drivers was the right idea.

Our community needed a wake-up call that texting and driving – and other forms of distracted driving – can kill people.

We’ve all done it. Even police officers have done it, as somebody pointed out the other day on Facebook.

And if everybody’s doing it, even while judging others for it, then maybe a wake-up call was in order.

And we just got a big one.

This story was originally published June 2, 2017 at 7:08 PM with the headline "‘Sure glad I wasn’t on Bradley Park Drive Thursday morning’."