Laws in Oregon are volatile. They change a lot, and there is always a lot of chatter about what is happening, most of it half-truths at best. Most recently there has been a lot of discussion about changes that prevent drivers from legally using their cell phones to talk or text while driving. There has been some discussion about the changes to require drivers to slow down and pull over more to avoid emergency vehicles, but mostly people just want to use their phones while driving.
Oregon State Police will be trying to cash in keep us safe by patrolling I-5 tomorrow and ticketing commuters. If you drive on the freeway, either stay off the phone, use a hands free phone, or keep an eye out for the cops.
Texting or talking while driving has been shown to be statistically linked as a cause of accidents. However, if you’re going to bring that into the equation, then even the “hands free” sets that are still allowed by Oregon law should be banned, since they also shown to have the same effects that cause accidents to the same degree. Extrapolating even more, it would be illegal to talk to the driver of a vehicle. I hope you’re not missing the point here: Breaking a drivers concentration is the problem here, regardless of the actual thing causing the distraction.
As always tweet @KristopherIves if you have something to say!
Some interesting things are happening with a local news station here in Salem, Oregon called KATU. They’ve opened up a community area of their website for volunteers to get involved with submitting content to their news organization. I had a chance to talk to a member of their staff on the phone, and I’m quite excited about the entire thing. It’s refreshing to see a big organization embracing technology instead of fighting it, and that appears to be exactly what KATU is doing.
A bit of background for reads who aren’t familiar with Oregon lore. Salem is the capital of Oregon, but Portland is the major metropolitan city, so in terms of news coverage and just about everything else except State legislature and bureaucracy - Salem gets the shaft. Even the office for KATU’s Salem site is located in Portland.
My interest was sparked when I started following @GinoCorridori on Twitter, who is a local coorispondant in Salem for KATU. In other words, he’s the guy that has to stand out in the rain, since it’s probably always going to be raining here in Oregon. In the short time I’ve been following he’s been posting pictures, asking questions, and getting involved. We’ll have to see if the Salemites take notice though.
Submitting content to their community site is a win-win. They get to keep their ear to the ground on the internet, and bloggers get much wanted exposure and another platform to launch their ideas. Content submitted doesn’t have an exclusive copyright, so I can submit content that I write for my own site or other sites. If they decide to pick up an article, it could go to the main KATU website.
I enjoy using Digg and reading Slashdot, but it lacks the locality that makes a lot of things important to us. Even on a great day when there are lots of interesting stories, they might not be very engaging when they’re about far away places. Before this the best Salem had was probably Craigslist Rants, which is often flooded with pure madness and heavily trolled.