Here’s an article that shows how cultural shifts do not trickle down from old to young but from the youth to the older generations. If those pesky kids with their new fangled twitter machines and iphones annoy you, beware…you just might want one too. From CNN:
Teenagers exchange text messages while driving because, well, they’re teenagers and teenagers sometimes do dumb things. But suit-wearing adults who should know better are texting behind the wheel too, driven by grown-up motivations.
“My job has me out on the road for four to five days out of the week,” Anthony Perry, a director of business development for a Washington-based health care research firm, told CNN in an e-mail sent from his BlackBerry. “I don’t particularly think I am that good at texting while driving but I do it anyway, recognizing the risks.”
Those risks are significant. A Virginia Tech Transportation Institute study released this week showed truck drivers are 23 times more likely to be in a crash if they’re texting, and several fatal accidents have been blamed on drivers or train operators who were distracted by texting.
Nevertheless, for many in business, it seems to be a matter of competitive survival.
“Now with e-mail and with the advent of the BlackBerries and hyper-accessibility, there’s this sense that if you don’t show that you’re always prepared and ready to respond and address an issue, then somehow you’re going to be perceived as not being conscientious or not keeping up on things,” said Tom Britt, a professor of social psychology at Clemson University in South Carolina. Watch someone attempt to text and drive »
“I could not imagine doing my job, or living my life, without the aid of a bberry,” Perry wrote. “I don’t know many who could who are in my line of work.”
Entrepreneurs and people in service industries, such as lawyers, may feel the heat more than others, said Dr. Debra Condren, a business psychologist and executive coach with offices in New York and San Francisco, California.
“The constant pressure to be on the grid, especially in this economy — ‘Oh my gosh, has a client called? Has a potential client called? Am I going to lose the job? Am I going to miss an opportunity? — makes us kind of revert to almost an adolescent mentality in terms of thinking that we’re invulnerable [vis a vis] texting and driving,” she said.
But those fears are overblown for most people, she said.
“There’s this sense that we’re so important that every single moment has to be filled; we can’t even pull over or we’re going to miss five minutes’ driving time or 10 minutes’ driving time. The pace is at this breakneck speed,” said Condren, author of “Ambition Is Not a Dirty Word,” a career guide for women.
“The truth is nobody is that important or that in demand that they can’t practice safety and good common-sense behaviors.”
This works hand in hand with an article I wrote a few years back on driving with a cell phone call “Get the Cell of the Phone!”
Get over yourselves and text later!
