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As a police officer one of my duties is traffic control. Yeah, I'm the guy out there with the white gloves and the whistle and the orange vest, moving the iron through the intersection. Fortunately, I work the same intersection at the same times of day and mostly with the same commuters, so we are all fairly familiar with each other and the routine. Early on I learned to spot the dangerous drivers as they would approach my intersection: The girl tuning her radio, the guy with his buddies in the car revving the engine, the fellow pushing the envelope because he was late for work or maybe because he had just had an argument with the wife, or the lady with the frosted windshield.

If you are to survive doing traffic control you need to be alert and on your toes at all times, but when I see one of the drivers I have described above, I am extra alert. Usually it takes an extra blast or two on the whistle to get their attention so that I can stop, move or turn them. But at least I CAN get their attention.

My traffic control duties usually run during the rush for about a half an hour in the morning and another half hour in the afternoon. On any given day I may have a half dozen or so "Miscommunications" with drivers and at least seventy five percent of these involve drivers who are talking on their cell phones. I have never been able to figure out what is so interesting on the floor on the passenger side that most cell phone drivers seem to always down gaze at, but at least it is a posture that I can see coming. When one of these "Talkers" approaches my intersection I always do my best to just get them through and away from me and the rest of the drivers. Any attempt at having them do anything that deviates from whatever they have pre-programmed themselves for will run a high risk of creating a "Miscommunication"

I have also investigated a good number of traffic accidents that involved drivers using their cell phones. As often as not it takes a witness to come forward to get this information as the errant drivers themselves will seldom admit it. A typical example was an accident I investigated about a month ago where a teen aged girl was texting on her cell phone and missed a curve in the road and ended up in a barrow ditch. As she was tearfully explaining to me that she didn't know why she had run off the road her cell phone rang. It was her friend wondering why she had hung up on her all of a sudden. A full confession followed shortly thereafter. I am quite sure

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