Dozens of riders were injured when two trolley trains collided underground in downtown Boston Friday night. The transit authority says one of the trolley operators told police he was sending text messages when the crash occurred. (May
Texting and driving is awfully tempting. The phone chirps and you know just a quick glance, to see who its from. Then you find yourself replying back, and then you have a full blown conversation brewing, via text. In some places it is illegal. Here in California it is anyway. I am not going to play myself out to being a saint, I know I am guilty of it.
Maybe I should be placed out on a limb more than the trolley driver though. Granted he was working and neither situation should be accepted. Although you got to think for a second if you were driving the trolley. Its on a rail headed in one direction, all you have to do is stop and go. Taking a second to write or read a text message…. if it was my job you can bet I will likely be doing the same thing. Doesn’t excuse the fact that its wrong, but it would have to be awful tempting. Stop and go all day? Or just maybe this is exactly why I sit in front of a computer all day.
The errant text message also sent dozens of passengers to the hospital and closed down one of the busier sections of the Green Line at the Government Center and Park Street stops. The stops have since reopened, and criminal charges are all but set to be filed against the operator, Aiden Quinn, 24, of Attleboro, Mass. Quinn actually admitted to first responders that he was texting his girlfriend at the time of the crash because she wouldn’t answer his initial call (which he also made, presumably, while driving a packed subway train).
[Via Gizmodo]
