The Walking Blind

I wrote yesterday of my mp3 player, and that got me to thinking about something all to common these days: inattentive pedestrians. I am sometimes one of them, I'm sorry to say. I listen to music most of the time I'm on foot, and there's no denying the fact that it makes me less observant. I'm so into my music that I sing along lustily to virtually every track, only occasionally desisting in the immediate presence of strangers.

It dictates my pace often, does the music. A slow song will lead me to follow suit, and a peppy song will have me really hustling. I may not be so oblivious that I walk into people and jaywalk across busy streets, but an alleyway or neighborhood sidestreet is no match for the head of steam I build up when 'Boogie Shoes' comes up on the Shuffle. I'm cognizant of the risk I'm running in so doing. As they say, knowing is half the battle, and I now look intently while rocking out on the streets.

There are lots of people like that out there. We're all so concerned about distracted drivers, and that's a good thing given the thousands of pounds of metal they're careening around town in, but a humble jogger can spark every bit as spectacular of a multi-car wreck all by her lonesome. Even if it's just a pedestrian who gets hurt or a single driver who's injured and damages their car swerving out of the way, that's something, right? What can you do? Some lawmaker somewhere came up with the idea of banning headphones.

It was one of those principled stands they had to know would fail, but of course they clogged up their legislative body's agenda with it anyway to draw attention to the issue. At least that was the motive given, though the real thing the lawmaker was probably trying to publicize was the lawmaker. That's usually what I figure is behind such things: outrage in search of a reason. It's not a thing for government anyway, but for society. We've got this technology that we need to figure out how to use responsibly. We don't have such a good track record with that, but maybe we'll get with something someday.