Fifi Rhodes This I must ask. You see during the festive season two idiots nearly collided with me in two separate incidents. I have a brand new car and if it is bumped by some mini-mind fool it’s back to footing. First, Daniel Munamava Street is one of the City’s shortest streets and if you cause an accident in that street please go and ask for your money back from the licensing authorities. I believed that the most popular innovation in travel over the past decade has nothing to do with the car, the people who drive them, or the roads over which they travel. Rather, it is the ability to carry on telephone conversations while driving. Just like people have been asked not to smoke in certain areas, they can also be asked to turn off their cell phones where it is not polite to use them. A law must be called in to make people listen to these things otherwise we Namibians will end up looking stupid, which is what people say about us anyway. The safety of using them in the car is often questioned. Like these two youngsters for that matter. While cellular phones are really elements of communication rather than transportation, their potential impact is sizable. However, one of the most often-criticized cell problems is talking whilst driving. This has become a way of showing off for many Namibians not considering other people’s safety. Man, if you really need to answer that phone, just pull over on the side of the road, and talk your talk but don’t take others with you. As the popularity of cell phones has increased in the last five years, so has the number of public safety advocates who link cell phone use by drivers to numerous fatal automobile accidents. Dialling numbers, receiving calls and holding conversations on cell phones while driving eats away at the concentration required of motorists. Beyond the tragic human toll of fatalities caused by drivers distracted by cell phones, scientific studies have established correlations between cell phone usage and accidents. I have in my frustration towards the handy gadgets observed during the festive season many drivers with cell phones and the risk of a collision when using a celli was four times higher than the risk when a cellular was not being used. Holding a conversation on a cell phone while driving is no more distracting or different than talking to a passenger, eating food or scrambling for a music tape or CD. Motorists and friends of mine were involved in accidents due to inattentive driving decades before the advent of cell phones and no studies that I know of can prove that cell phones cause accidents. A driver should be able to chose whether or not to use a cell phone while driving. A cell phone, everybody says, is one of many distractions. Drivers are more distracted when they change the radio station or insert a CD than when they use their cell phones. Drivers need to keep their eyes on the road, and their minds on driving. It is so that if you’re using a cell phone while driving, you are 30 percent more likely to get into an accident than if you’re not using your cell phone. One of this is when one is having a complicated telephone conversation which is a demanding activity for the brain … depending on how stressful the conversation is. My doctor says drivers using cell phones have a tougher time navigating complex manoeuvres. “Time sharing and multi-tasking do not come easily to the human brain,” says my medic. “Cell phones are a distraction. But so are coffee, screaming children, adults quarrelling, and reading the newspaper. Are you going to ban them as well?” he asked me. Instead, careless driving by using a cell phone must be nipped in the bud. Maybe the Minister of Finance must look into taxing cell phone owners because what they don’t realise is that cell phones are fast becoming popular and it can be a goldmine that can bring lots of dollars to the state coffers. “It’s as simple as that: don’t talk and drive,” or pay the taxman. Eewa!