Haraszewski Blog 1660
Sept. 5th, 2020
pg 1 of 2 (cont. on back)
Reply ID: dfny

Hello
"GN22",

Thanks for all your transcriptions and responses - it's great to receive that kind fo positive and thoughtful feedback. I'm not sure how my comment replies appear on the site, like whether they publish as band new blog posts or if they show up only in the thread of comments to the earlier post (I hope it's the latter but I fear its the former :( ), so I'm just going to reply to all your different comments at one time. (Looks like you left the comments around Aug. 13th?) Maybe let me know how it shows up on BtB, and how commenters like yourself are notified of a reply to your comments?
Re, the cell phone laws and car crashes, I don't recall what data I put into that particular post, so I'll just recap what might be the most significant variable: the rate of crashes (not deaths, not injuries, just reported accidents) per 100 million miles. From 1990 to 2000, the cellphones on the road increased dramatically, but the crash rate goes like this, 282, 267, 266, 276, 277, 273, 260, 241, 233, and 233 again, respectively, from 91 to 2000. And while phones became utterly ubiquitous in the next 5 or 6 years, the crash rate just kept dropping, all before most laws were passed: 226 (2001), 221 (2002), 219 (2003), 208 (2004), 206 (2005), 198 (2006). If I were unscrupulous, I'd say this is an argument FOR using phones in cars! But it's not, nor can it be used against doing so.
You're 100% right, ppl will bring up "other statistics" to "prove" we need laws, like the ever-popular line that in accidents today, 20% of the time a "cellphone was involved." Voila, "distracted driving" causes accidents! But if you scratch the surface, I think you'll find that we've simply started noting the phone and counting it as a "factor", whether or not it had anything at all to do with a particular accident. Fluffing up the figures like that means it becomes possible to claim cellphone use as "responsible" for accidents almost 100% of the time. It's extremely dishonest use of statistics, but it's the norm for anyone pushing an agenda. As for whether tie will tell if we keep the anti-cell phone laws... I think that's fully decided. It seems to me that the ratchet of lawmaking and social control only turns one way. Once you've got a law you almost always have a law for life.
About the "true-police" T.V. shows... Yeah, I should've included LivePD there too, for sure. I think it was the most popular one for the last couple years, but I never watched it so it wasn't really high up in my consciousness, you know? Plus, it was the canceling of COPS that was in the news, and it was COPS that my dad warned about all those years ago. You show ppl nightly examples of what cops actually do, and those ppl never develop a sense about what cops have the right to do, so we all just acquiesce to being victims, and cops find it a lot easier to cross the lines. A true lose-lose for anyone who isn't a cop. :(
Finally, I'm so glad you transcribed and read one of my older posts! I've been thinking that once again they're a couple rungs down the posting chain, old entries have little chance of ever being seen again. That's why I've started listing the older posts that my new ones might relate to, so if someone likes the current one they can easily see what else might interest them, too... it would be awesome to see new comments start trickling in on older posts.
The book (Marcus and Me) is a good one; I hope you get to read it. It's really short, but packs a punch. You can order it, if its not on Amazon, from the publisher, Every Farthing Publications, P.O. Box 575, Lincoln, ME 04457. I reached out to the author a few years ago, and he said he was gonna use my review for something... not sure if he ever did. I hope you enjoy it.
Thanks again... your comments and transcriptions mean a LOT to me. Please do tell me whether my replies to comments become part of the comment chain on a specific post. All my best!
-Dymitri