Freeman of Speech: If you drive or walk and text, you deserve to be egged

I'm installing egg turrets on my Corolla.

For those of you who think it's cute to walk or drive and text at the same time, fair warning.
I'm going to cover you in yolk.

The statistics are out there. The widely cited study from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute explains just how dangerous driving and texting is, raising the probability of a crash 23 times.

Thankfully, Louisiana is one of 14 states to outlaw texting and driving, with fines starting at $175 for a first offense, according to DrivingLaws.org.

As a whole, texting rose last December to a level 10 times higher than the rate three years before, according to a July 27 New York Times article.

The evidence is out there. Did you know you're four times as likely to crash while texting than while drunk?

Don't believe me? Look it up.

Do us all a favor: Wait until you're parked to search your iPhone for these stats.

More than anything, texting exposes the newfound banality of communication.
Expressions, emotions and attitudes change with the impersonality of a text or e-mail.

Problems abound with Louisiana's driving text ban. It's improbable that this law is even enforceable. Other than setting up security cameras in every car in the state, there's no logical way to prosecute this highly dangerous activity that doesn't waste valuable tax dollars and police time prosecuting real crimes, like smoking pot.

I can already hear the libertarians applauding my next thought.

We need to bring back citizen's arrests so we can enforce this new law on our own.

We need to splatter eggs on the faces of the nonbelievers. Literally.

Driving in Baton Rouge is already perilous, as the city is home to the 36th most congested traffic in the nation out of the top 100 most populous cities, according to INRIX National Traffic Scorecard and reported in The Daily Reveille on Sept. 9.

The University is admittedly a walking campus, but when Easy Streets are let up and I drive around campus, I'm stopped every 10 seconds by someone busy chatting with somebody on Facebook. They fail to notice my beige, 2,000-pound bringer of death.
A rev of the engine goes a long way in getting texters involved.

There's no law against walking while texting —it's just a pet peeve of mine. After all, the University has one of the most beautiful campuses in the country, and it's a shame so many are missing out because someone found a new application that simulates a crying Korean baby.

I don't have an iPhone, but that idea's not that far-fetched. There are more than 100,000 apps in the iTunes store.

Doesn't it say something about our society that we can't even walk without having our eyes consumed in an alternate, hand-held reality?

Do your Twitter followers really need to know that you smell like a foot because you're walking to your car? Do your Facebook friends need to chat with you while you drive to Taco Bell at 3 in the morning while you're putting off a paper?

To fight off the impending failure of the planet to stop ADD and the unexplainably compulsive need to be pithy, I propose everyone bring a carton of eggs to school and hurl them — violently — at anyone who's walking and texting.

For the drivers, my Corolla tank with built-in "Egg-K47" will debut in the spring.
And for anyone else who thinks there's nothing wrong with texting while walking or driving, take a good long look in the mirror.

Oh God, there's probably an app for that.

Eric Freeman, Jr. is a 22-year-old political science senior from New Orleans. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_efreeman.



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Contact Eric Freeman Jr. at efreeman@lsureveille.com