I asked my daughter the other day if she was interested in Viking.
I meant to ask if she was interested in going over to the hill by Celtic Junction on our bikes, but when I dictated the text, Google thought I said “Viking,” and then I tapped “Send” without reading it, because what’s the point of using the Google Assistant and Voice to Text if you then have to look down at your screen anyway.
Though I do, I must confess, look at my screen sometimes when I’m biking. My Endomondo app is set to keep the screen on so if I set it before I leave, I can just glance down at the screen and see how far I’ve come and how fast I’m going. But if I leave that screen — if I want to make a phone call, say, then the standard time-out settings come into play, and I have to do the little double-tap thing that never quite works until about the fifth time I do it, and then swipe my security pattern and I have to swipe it correctly before the screen times out, otherwise I have to start tapping again to turn it on. So then I try to get back to Endomondo right away to prevent it from locking again.
I have timed myself doing this. It seems to take about eight seconds.
I’ve observed how far I go in eight seconds.
Of course I look up a bunch during those eight seconds because I don’t want to drive off the road, or hit someone.
But let’s be real. During those eight seconds my attention is split, and things are happening around me that I’m not noticing.
If I’m approaching the place where the Greenway crosses Minnehaha, I remind myself to focus on the road and not be distracted by my phone, but let’s be real — even if I look up at the street and put both hands on the handlebars, some of my mind is thinking about the text I just got from my daughter, and not thinking about the traffic.
If I were to die doing something as stupid as texting while biking, what would my daughter think of me? So I swear I’m not going to do it again, but then, after I’ve crossed the Sabo bridge, and I’m back on the straight-away, I turn the phone back on — just to check my time. And then, because my daughter texted me, and I want to make sure I’m accessible to her as she navigates her adolescence, I want to read it right away.
“Hey Google — read text messages.”
Samuel Hicks, they say, was looking down at his phone for eight seconds while driving down Highway 36 last March. He probably believed that he was glancing up often enough to see what was in front of him. Especially since he was on the straight away.
Went to Rob’s funeral in Amery this weekend. It was good to see family, to reconnect with some old friends, and meet some new people. But wouldn’t a wedding have served just as well?
Don’t text and drive, folks.