Beats Doing It While Driving . . .

Women hate doing faces on train, but loathe wasting commuting time more, according to Mainichi Daily News.

Wouldn't bring this up, but I saw a woman applying her mascara next to me in the car on Olympic Blvd. today (and not only at red lights). Should have taken her picture and gotten all Amy Alkon on her, but I always forget that my phone takes decent pictures.

This illustrates why banning using celphone handsets while driving won't accomplish much. Driving modern cars is too physically easy, car cabins are too quiet and comfortable, and driving is done mostly while people are on mental auto-pilot while thinking of a dozen other things. It's not each individual distraction that's the danger, it's the general distractedness with which people can get away with while operating a car, that leads to people taking these kinds of chances while driving.

People didn't do this as much when tooling around in unresponsive hunks of steel that didn't have AC, power steering or power brakes. Nothing focuses your attention on the road like needing several hundred feet to stop your 4000 lb vehicle even while travelling at around 50mph.