Driven to Distraction.....How The Cult Of "Busy" Is Killing Us

Sadly the carnage caused everyday on our roads by distracted drivers is starting to lose its shock value, if for no other reason than it's just all too common........seems we can't go even a day without something in the news about a hapless mother of three being obliterated at a four way stop by some idiot checking his email, or a motorcyclist being literally punted off the highway while another clueless driver fumbles with their nav system.

As motorcyclists, we're particularly at risk from distracted drivers............for all the obvious reasons. After over 30 years on the road I can tell you that in the best of circumstances motorcycles are all but invisible to the average cage pilot........and that's when they're actually looking for us! With all the stimulus at their fingertips we're lucky if today's driver can manage to divert a sliver of his precious brainpower to actually driving the vehicle. They've simply got other things to do........they're busy.

In the good old, bad old days, when you eyeballed some yahoo weaving back and forth in his lane, you naturally assumed he was drunk, or high, or both. You kept a wary eye on him, and rode on. Not any more.........what with nav systems, i-pods, smart phones, video entertainment systems, 1,000 watt stereos, and the occasional partied out waste-case, your odds at winning the bone-crusher biker lotto have gone up exponentially.

Honestly, when's the last time you rode up to a light, looked over at the car next to you and the driver wasn't texting, emailing, checking the nav, fumbling with an i-pod or just chatting on the phone. You can't remember, can you? And do you know why that is? The cult of busy, that's why.

It all started in the late 90's when for some reason being "busy" (I'll leave it to cultural anthropologists to give a proper definition) became a sort of status symbol. The busier you were, the hipper, smarter and generally cooler you were. People went out of their way to tell each other just how busy they were, that alone could keep one fairly busy. Not busy? Loser. Hell, Starbucks flourished, not because of the mediocre, overpriced coffee, but because it has become a sort "Our Lady of the Perpetually Busy", where a generation of self-absorbed Crackberry addicts could gather to confess their allegiance to all things busy.

And the worst thing??? The cult of busy has become so pervasive, that it actually does feel somehow "wrong" just to sit at a light and not check your email.........or at least Tweet your nights movie plans. I mean drivings so easy, right? There's all that down time; at lights, on the freeway, at night when there's nothing to look at.....and we're all so very busy, it just makes sense to be "productive"

Alas, we bikers are not only victims, we're becoming perpetrators as well. Touring motorcycles with nav systems, bluetooth equipped helmets, and more are just a click or glance away......soon we will be mowing down luckless pedestrians with the same gleeful abandon as our cage driving brothers. Now there's progress for you.

Unfortunately that busy train has sailed.........we've all drank the Kool-Aide, we're all busy now. The simple act of driving a car, or riding a motorcycle (let alone doing it well) will never hold the allure it once did, it's old news, so yesterday. So be wary fellow riders, the busy are all around us......they might even be us.......let's just try not to be too busy to stay alive.