Distracted driving hardly an ‘epidemic’
Epidemic? Seriously, an epidemic? As in “The epidemic of distracted driving” as stated in your “Tunnel Vision” article of Dec. 4. Epidemic, according to the Random House College Dictionary, means “affecting at the same time a large number of persons in a locality, as a contagious disease.”
Come on Daily Herald, isn’t, then, “epidemic” just a bit of an overstatement? As a person who drives from the Wisconsin border to Peotone and from the lakefront to Annie Glidden Road, in my personal experience, I can vouch that “a large number of persons in (this) locality” is not in the least distracted.
This, of course, would depend on your definition of “distracted” because listening to the radio or talking with your passenger can be considered distraction, if you care to stretch the definition. There are more drivers with their hands at the 10-2 positions than on the phone.
Daily Herald, you’re supposed to be journalists and journalists are supposed to be wordsmiths who select the proper words to craft sentences to accurately portray a given situation. Your use of the word “epidemic” conjures up images of a hideous, deforming disease that is running rampant through the countryside certain to kill all in its path.
Use of such a word, especially when no problem exists, serves no good use and can only scare or alarm the public into some sort of unneeded or unwarranted action. Unless, of course, that was part of the agenda. I invite the Daily Herald to come with me sometime as I drive and to see if one of us can convincingly prove to the other his point of view.
Mike Goba
Lombard