Drivers of automobiles using cellular phones - Essay Example Use of cell phone while driving is no less dangerous than drunk driving, and thus, should be condemned equally. People tend to deny that using cell phones while driving is dangerous and see it as a debatable topic. Cell phone use while driving is dangerous and the biggest evidence of this is the acknowledgement of dangers associated with this practice by the people who indulge in it. According to Gallup and Gallup (2003, p. 432), two-thirds of people that make use of cell phone as they drive disregard the idea that this practice is safe. There has been considerable law-making against eating while driving and sitting a child on the lap of the driver while he/she drives. Cell phone use while driving is much more dangerous than any of these cases because this practice distracts the driver mentally and makes him/her mentally absent while he/she is physically on the driving seat. The risk of using cell phone while driving increases considerably with age. As people age, they decline in their agility of reflexes and are not able to make best use of their capabilities. Ranney and Pulling (1990) have noted declines in the processing of information with increase of age. Arenberg (1982) determined increased difficulty in problem solving with increased age while Temple (1989) found that increase in age causes short term memory. All of these factors make the driving increasingly riskier. Findings of these researchers suggest that old people are more susceptible to accidents when they use cell phones while driving as compared to the young people. A lot of research has been conducted in the past to suggest that use of cell phone while driving is dangerous. Use of cell phones instantly slows down the reaction time of drivers and hence, makes them more susceptible to be caught in accidents. Young people hearing calls along with driving are no better than sleepy septuagenarians. David Strayer, the Professor of Psychology in the University of Utah conducted a comprehensive research to analyze the effects of cell phone use on the capability of drivers. The team of researchers determined in 2001 that even the hands-free calls play an important role in distracting the drivers. A reason for this was found in 2003 as a result of the continued research. They found that although the cell phone using drivers look, yet they are not able to see because their mind is focusing on the conversation. If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, their reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver who is not using a cell phone … It’s like instantly aging a large number of drivers … Once drivers on cell phones hit the brakes, it takes them longer to get back into the normal flow of traffic … The net result is they are impeding the overall flow of traffic. (Strayer cited in Britt, 2005). Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign second the results derived by Strayer and his team. Arthur Kramer, the research leader said that the cell phone using drivers of any age are not able to pick out significant changes in the surroundings, and their reaction time is also longer accordingly (Britt, 2005). Number of deaths in US per year that can be attributed to the use of cell phones while driving is 26000 while 330000 injuries happen because of accidents that
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English - Essay Example Manalansan IV. He is an Anthropologist specializing in Asian American Studies, Latin American, and Caribbean studies, at the University of Illinois. He is also an author, who has written on topics such as gender, and food. One of his works on food is the “Prairescapes: Mapping food, loss, and longing.†In this article, Manalansan also depicts food as playing different roles from that of human survival. In this paper, I will use these two works to enforce food as a powerful social tool, with special social functions. Many people overlook the other functions of food due to lack of knowledge. Charles Johnson’s “Dr. King’s Refrigerator,†is a fictional story of one Martin Luther King, Jr. He is busy looking for a theme for his Sunday sermon when he suddenly feels hungry and heads to his refrigerator for a snack. He finds food that prepared by his wife for her visitors the next morning. Seeing a variety of food, King suddenly starts making all sorts of connections with this food. The foods are from different world regions, and he is fascinated at how this food connected him to these world regions. The connection he feels is a pure interaction of Buddhism in the ideals of the Baptists. Charles Johnson writes, “Then he slowly put the apple down, feeling not so much hunger now as a profound indebtedness and thanksgiving- to everyone and everything in Creation†(Johnson 3). This also portrays Charles Johnson’s writing style as unique. He leaves the readers with pictures in the mind. The quote also brings out the fusion of religions, in this case, Buddhism and Baptist. The appreciation of nature and the belief that nature indirectly joins humans is a Buddhism notion that is felt by a Baptist preacher. Charles John has widely employed symbolism to point out the other roles that food plays, He uses food to symbolize the cultures and the people from where they were grown. Johnson writes, “All of human culture, history, and civilization laid unscrolled at his feet, and he had only to step into his kitchen to discover it. He looked around the disheveled room, and he saw in each succulent fruit, each slice of bread, and each grain of rice a fragile, inescapable network of mutuality in which all earthly creatures were codependent, integrated, and tied in a single garment of destiny†(Johnson 3). Here, Johnson tries to emphasize that people should adopt a new way of perceiving at nature as human beings connect through nature. One does not have to be physically present in France in order to experience their culture. We can experience other people’s cultures, innovations, and civilization, by simply owning their products and eating their food. This shows that human beings are closer to each other than they think. Johnson’s work has allowed for philosophy and literature to integrate. His passages are philosophical as well as epistemological. He makes readers curious and to wonder what the story drives to. He infuses his philosophical ideas in the well-developed characters. He incorporates reality with fantasy, under the guidance of philosophy. For instance, he argues,“When we get up in the morning, we go into the bathroom where we reach for a sponge provided for us by a Pacific Islander. We reach for soap created by a Frenchman. The towel is provided by a Turk. Before we leave for our jobs, we are beholden to more than half the worldâ€
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